The Inbetween Mark

While it may not be the case on every gravestone marker, on most headstones there is the name followed by two important numbers.  The first number is the date of birth and the second is the date of death.  The two numbers marking the years is usually separated by a dash.  It could be said that even as the two numbered years represent the beginning and the end, the dash in the middle represents all the life that was lived between birth and death.  How strange that something so important could be represented by something as insignificant as a dash.

 

Graveyards do indeed have a way of humbling us.  They have a way of speaking truth to us that we do not want to hear.  We go through life with such a regard for all our accomplishments and all our accumulations.  How easy it is for us to come to a place where we think that life cannot go on without us.  But, it does.  Really.  Life never misses a beat even when we are no longer there to hear or feel it.  Oh, our life is an important thing, a thing of value, something brought into being by our Creator, but in the final analysis the Creator is in charge of it and not us. 

 

Not a single one of us has any way of determining how many years we live.  We can do all the healthy things and still have a short life.  And, we can do all the dumb things and live till we are older than most.   The number of our days is in the hands of the One who brought us into being.  What we do with the time given is to be used for purposes of that Creator.  Otherwise the dash counts for as little as it seems to count.