The
people that walked in darkness …
Throughout the Old and New
Testaments this reference appears in various ways. To me, it implies that all of mankind toils
through a lifetime of fear, tragedy, pain, and travail. We all come to the same
end: this shell we inhabit stops functioning.
I don’t pretend to understand the
vastness and the enormous mysteries of the universe, but after nearly
seventy-eight years in my own shell I’ve come to my own understanding of a few
things. I’m not saying I am right about any of this. It’s just what I’ve
gleaned by observing life around me and events in the lives of those I love.
Whatever your belief system, I think
it’s generally accepted that something momentous in the history of mankind occurred
those generations ago in the part of the world we know as the Levant. A
personage walked the earth for a time, touched the lives of those he came in
contact with, made some of them better people. He died. In some way he was
reborn and this belief caught fire, and one of the world’s great – albeit flawed, as it seems they all are – religions was born and flourishes still today, many hundreds of years later.
It seems to me the Creator of the
universe gave a great gift to Its creation. The gift of hope. The belief that
there is more than just this “little life, rounded with a sleep.” Perhaps we
are not a shell that empties itself of life when it stops working. Perhaps we
are spiritual beings, inhabiting a human body for a while to learn – and hopefully,
to love. And after our body dies – as it must ─ we continue to something wonderful
beyond our ability to imagine.
And knowing that would indeed be a
cause for celebration.
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