Do we have more to live for?

THE EDITOR, Madam:

IF IT’S not the Queen, it is someone else – the man out there in the street, the unknown traveller out there on the world, or the anonymous person who have recently quit this stage called life. And like lady Macbeth in Shakespeare, death continues it’s heedless march, and turns life into a grand idiotic shadowboxing – like the limitless energy of a buffoon that ends all our activities upon it’s silly silence.

So, is this all there is in life, and will it forever be so? To eat, drink and enjoy, for tomorrow we shall all die, is that it? Is death just an irreversible law that makes up part of living? Whether it is someone of nobility, such as Queen Elizabeth II, or some common Joe out there, there is a consistent truth that doesn’t escape those who have a short-term view of life. For example, many often make the cynical remark that “Man haffi dead so that nedda man live – a just suh di ting set up.”

But, when you consider the outpouring of sympathy and condolences to families and friends of the departed, such as Queen Elizabeth II, doesn’t the truth of death itself pushes the significance of life to the fore? Since memories and good wishes are formed on a life of someone who lived for 96 years or any random age, why would living longer, or even forever, be redundant?

If forever seems a boring period to be living, what is a reasonable limit you’d suggest?. Ecclesiastes 3:11 is appropriate when it says, God has put even eternity into man’s heart. Interesting, whatever time period is picked as a workable limit for living would still make dying a silly intrusion, since death depends on life itself to write the memories of the dead. Believing in everlasting, life therefore, isn’t really bellyful talk, or some fancy pie in the sky.

When at John 11:26 Jesus says, and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?, it easily fits with the desire to live and attaining it. So, to conjure up an reasonable estimate of man’s life span maybe based more on our own experiences.

According to John 3:16, For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

HOMER SYLVESTER

Mount Vernon

New York