Most of us think of the grave as something that looms up ahead, like a pit that we are walking towards.

We look to the future when we think of our death... or maybe we don't look at all.

We avoid funerals, avoid suffering, avoid the dying, the nursing homes, the cemeteries, trying to drown out the truth: that we have limited days, and they are fast flying.

But really,

it's the past that often kills us.

Our mistakes, past failures, riding on our backs like a ton of bricks. And they just keep stacking higher.

It is in this shadow that many of us live our days.

Out of fear, this fear of repetition, of stacking the weight higher, we step back from the challenge, the risks, and away from fullest life.

Teddy Roosevelt said this about a hundred years ago, but it's been true for all of time:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly… Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

If we fear life, then we do not really live.

There's that echoing quote in Braveheart: "Every man dies, not every man really lives."

This line of thought points us to the end of life, to death.

It's healthy to keep the grave in our perspective.

My senior year of high school, I was involved in a several-car wreck and watched parts of cars explode slow-motion past my windows. In one second, life was changed. It radically swelled my gratefulness to be alive, my view of each day. I saw music in every moment, a moment that might not have been.

We are not promised our fill, not promised old age.

Not promised a surburban home. Not promised retirement. Not promised grandchildren sitting on our lap and Christmases with family.

Life is a gift, not a right. We didn't bring ourselves into this world, and we won't take ourselves out. It's the Creator who chooses, with love and wisdom.

It reminds us the end is coming, and that sweet life is short. Our destination isn't earth, isn't wealth and comfort...

Ask it every morning when the fear and worry stride to your side:

How much can I give away before I am taken away?

Life is too short to live in fear, crippled beneath burdens not meant for us to carry.

Even this death Jesus has defeated, and the living death on our backs along with it.

He calls us to die to ourselves that we may live eternally, breathing deeper because we breathe for more than earthly life.

His "yoke is easy" and his "burden light."

Freed to live because Jesus died. Free to die to self and live for others. Dead to fear, dead to sin.

Alive to life. Our faults do not define us any longer.

We are free even to fail. Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. His love defines us.

Every image that bounces back to cones and rods and nerves, every sigh,

hug,

hue, more precious.

We fully live because He lives.

"And Death, thou shalt die."

And we shall meet behind the sun, where the mountain rise out of sight.