12-7-03
I went to a funeral a few days ago. The deceased was not young, but neither was he very
old. The experience, as funerals usually do, got me to thinking about death. Death can be
and has been looked at in many ways, but most of the ways are attempts to come to grips
with this one inevitable eventuality. Death is the great leveler. Some men are recognized by
other men as having been higher than other men, better than other men, more than other men
in this life. Those men's funerals are likely to be grander affairs than those of other men, just
as their lives were grander affairs than the lives of normal men. Some few of them will be
memorialized in history. But, to paraphrase the preacher, how dies the man of great acclaim?
The same as the dog. The death of the wise is the same as the death of the fool, to use a
phrase closer to the original.
Oh, how we long to be among the acclaimed here! While Lazarus, the beggar's just barely
getting started in his glory we don't envy him. Rather, we envy the man who must build
bigger and bigger trophy cases and find more and more exotic methods to enjoy life. The
Bible calls that man a fool. Why? Because death is coming and coming soon - personally for
him. How is it that so many of us envy the fool and his flare of glory while we despise the
path that leads to everlasting glory beyond even the imagination of the fool?
Dale Huckabay
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