That is not necessarily a morbid thought—at least it shouldn’t be—but it is one that needs to press to the forefront of my mind so that there is little wasted time with what I have left. I am also at the age where I am looking back in a contemplative manner at some of the roads that I have traveled and some of the choices that I have made. There are some regrets I have gathered and there are some victories that are along the way. Maybe this is the pattern with most people who are at mid-life and beyond.
Having read a lot
of the works of the Puritans over the years I am reminded that throughout their
many sermons and biblical writings that death was a frequent subject that they
were very familiar with. Many of the people who lived during that time era knew
what it was to have children to die, sometimes several children, mothers would
die in childbirth, they knew what it was like for farming accidents to take the
lives of loved ones, diseases that are now easily eradicated with modern
medicine was not as available to them, therefore death was the great enemy that
lurked about their daily lives regularly. Preachers did not shrink back from
that subject in their preaching. It also caused them to fill their sermons with
theological matters of heaven and the afterlife far more than what our modern
pulpits do, and I think that we are theologically, spiritually, and morally
poorer for that choice.
