Country singer Tim McGraw has a great song called “Live Like You Were Dying”. The lyrics are great, and you can read them here if you want to; better yet, find the song and listen to it. We all know we’re going to die “someday”, and we really don’t like to think about it much. Do you ever wonder what you would do if you knew when you were going to die?
There’s a great video circulating on YouTube by Carnegie Mellon University Professor Randy Pausch. He does know that he’s dying; he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year, and now only has months to live. He is a young man, with a wife and three small children. Apparently there is a tradition at Carnegie Mellon called The Last Lecture, where professors give a lecture on their subject as if they were dying, imparting crucial information to their students. Randy Pausch’s lecture is on “Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”, and it contains some wonderful messages about how to live.
The original video is lengthy at 76 minutes, but it is well worth your time. There are also abridged versions up on YouTube. Randy Pausch has a webpage, refreshingly informal, with links to the video, a related book that’s just come out, and information about research on pancreatic cancer, among other things. Sometimes I think we get our best inspiration for how to live by contemplating death, so I hope you’ll take this in the same spirit.
Part of what inspired me to write on this topic today was reading about a father who had to tell his little four year old daughter that her grandpa had just died. She asked about his body, saying, “Is that grandpa?” Her father told her, “No, that’s not him anymore; that’s just what he left behind. It’s just like when we go to Florida on vacation. We leave our winter coats behind, because we don’t need them there. Grandpa doesn’t need his body anymore.” I think that’s a pretty good analogy that fits with my understanding of death from a faith point of view. As I write this, I’m thinking of another song, by Christian songwriter Mark Schultz. In it he asks,
“What will you do with the time that’s left
Will you live it all with no regret?
Will they say that you loved till your final breath?”
So here’s to all of us, who after all are trying to live each day as best we can, making the most sense of it that we can, and letting the people we love know that we love them.
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