Monday, January 14, 2013

Reading your obituary....

A week or so ago, I decided to google my name. Seeing as I don't light it up from behind the arc night after night and I don't stand behind the presidential seal on a daily basis, I really didn't expect to find anything on the first page of google. What I did find surprised me - an obituary - an obituary for Shirley Dean. NOPE, not my own....but I do share a first and last name with this person, and we both are from West Michigan. WEIRD.

Anyways, reading this also made me think of Alfred Nobel. Surely you are aware that he is the reason for the world's most esteemed prizes - the Nobel Prizes. But, do you know why he decided to create such an endowment? To paraphrase what the link above describes in detail, he had the opportunity to read his obituary one day when the newspaper mistakenly thought he died instead of his brother. What he read surprised him. The newspaper went into great detail on how Alfred was responsible for engineering a compound that turned out to cause more harm than good (in many people's eyes). Nobel invented/created/discovered dynamite. Upon reading his obituary, he made it his goal to leave a positive impact on the world, which culminated in his philanthropic idea to reward others for their deeds in peace and science (knowledge).

Now, being in a similar yet very distinct position, I find one passage in the Bible to be very fitting - Ecclesiastes 9.
10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave,[c] where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.
...
18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war,
    but one sinner destroys much good.
St. Paul writes a similar passage to the church in Colossea:
17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:17)
In one of my English classes in high school, I had an assignment where I had to write my own eulogy.  While I don't recall precisely what I wrote, I do know that my behavior towards others drastically changed as a result of this assignment. No, I'm not perfect, but instances like thinking of my obituary and eulogy are a tangible assessment of what God instructs us to do. We can all take a lesson from Alfred Nobel. Let's take time to make sure everything we do is for the glory of God (the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the Triune God).