So Let Us Live to Live Forever

As we search and ponder the purpose and problems of life, all of us sooner or later face the question of the length of life, and of a personal, everlasting life. This question somehow lingers lifelong⎯but most insistently asserts itself when loved ones leave us, or when we think of leaving those we love⎯for life here goes swiftly, and anyone who hasn’t life hasn’t anything at all. Lord Byron seemed to sum it up in one anguished sentence:

Oh God! it is a fearful thing

To see the human soul take wing.¹

And so it would remain⎯a fearful thing⎯except for the assurance of the everlastingness of life. And as the fleeting years we have here come and go, the anguished thoughts for loved ones lost are softened by the gentle touch of time, with the assurance that these things are truly so. To every mother who has lost a child, to every father who has grieved for a departed son or daughter, to every companion left in loneliness, we would turn Job’s question to an answer: If a man die, he shall live again⎯for surely life everlasting is no more a miracle than this life that now we live. And in the silent, thoughtful hours there comes the quiet conviction of loved ones waiting in that place where nothing that is most personal or precious is lost. And through tears and trials, through fears and sorrows, through the loss and loneliness of losing loved ones⎯through all of this there is assurance of the everlastingness of life. Oh, you who mourn and each day miss the loved ones you have lost, take this comfort to your hearts, with faith and peace, and patient purpose. Our Lord and Savior is the living witness that these things are so. So let us live to live forever, and begin to do so not later than now. As the poets so well have said it⎯”The holy spirit of the Spring is working silently.”² “Once more the Heavenly Power makes all things new, . . . “³