Spiritual Development
Life's a Long Weekend
Life’s a Long Weekend
It was a typical youth camp until Dennis climbed a cliff edge wire fence. Reaching down to pick up a pine cone, he slipped and fell to the rocks below. Twelve year old Dennis was my friend and his funeral was my first. I’ll never forget the way his Dad aged overnight.
The preacher said Dennis wasn’t in the casket. I thought he was. Said he had gone home to heaven. Although an intriguing thought, I was only thirteen and didn’t give it much thought after the day.
“Here they come again,” said my older brother after glancing in his rear view mirror. ‘They’ were a bunch of young adults in a fast approaching big car. Twice we’d passed them, stopped on the side of the road to allow the heavy drinkers a nature stop.
Twice they’d passed us in a huge hurry. As we slowed and negotiated the S railway bend our ‘fellow travellers’ didn’t. They hit the level crossing bell post and when I turned I saw their car catapulting towards us.
Most of the blood that soaked my shirt came from removing a body off the railway line. It was the first time I touched a dead person.
By this time I was fifteen and it was obvious that the personality or spirit was no longer present inside the smashed body known as Roy.
Sudden, unexpected and certainly violent death is always confronting. Funerals are an uncomfortable experience for most. I know more than one who won’t attend a funeral, even if it’s a close family member.
Years ago it was culturally normal to talk about death, but not to talk about sex. These days it’s culturally normal to talk about sex, but not to talk about death.
Yet death is coming our way.
Death is central to the Easter story which offers a fearless death to those who accept and believe that Jesus did what he said he would.
Others have declared the same thing, but there’s no evidence to suggest anyone else has ever announced their own death and resurrection and got beyond first base.
I’m not in a hurry to die, but the concept holds no fear. The way I see it, our time on earth is like a long weekend camping trip.
