Death vs Man = ∞ vs 0

So Death claims another.

Sunshine after the storm. The last days of the MV Doulos. iPhone 3GS + SwankoLab

But in our minds, she is alive and animated, holding forth in a loud voice in the canteen on the merits of Madonna. She is rebellious. She is sassy and a natural leader. She is a school prefect with disdain for authority. She speaks her mind. She wears white-rimmed spectacles. She has brown floppy hair that she keeps pinned up with a clip. She has pale perfect skin.

She is laughing her cute laugh as she feeds a lamb from a bottle.

She takes the cats for walks on leashes.

She is just a long chatty phone-call away.

She loves her dog and smokes her ciggies with nonchalance.

She is no more. She walked out the window of her apartment. Her broken body lies within a closed coffin.

If time-travel were possible, if she were told how it would all end, she would have laughed. It could not be: she was strong, she had places to go and things to do. She would not have known there would be illnesses beyond the control of man.

Her husband's Facebook relationship status says: Single.

National Geographic Store Singapore. iPhone 3 GS + SwankoLab

As we all too die off one by one, there will be no memory of her ever existing. Her careful handwriting in autograph books will fade, her photos deleted, her possessions in the Salvation Army bin. There will be no remembrance of the joy she brought to some, nor of the consequences of her strongly-articulated opinions. Her love and her hate and her envy have already perished, and forever she has no more share in all that is done under the sun (Ecclesiastes 9:6). It will be as she never was.

As it will be for us all.

Perhaps in mourning her, we mourn for ourselves. But it need not be.

...he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. (Ecclesiastes 9:4-5)

Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.

Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head.

Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going. (Ecclesiastes 9:7-10)

Even though we are too shuffling along in the queue to the crematorium, we can enjoy life wholeheartedly, without bitter irony, because we know the One who has given us all these good things (cf Deuteronomy 8). He not only provides for us abundantly in the here and now, but he is the Eternal One - the only one who can and does remember us long after we are dust. Life is not meaningless and valueless; what we do and think and say counts because there will come a day when God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil (Ecclesiastes 12:14). And when we die, we die as ones with hope, going home to be with our Lord and our God, certain that He will raise us to life again never to die again (see 1 Corinthians 15), to enjoy his glory forever.