and that changes everything

       I have a friend who likes to go to funerals.  She says they teach her how to live.  They help her remember that she’ll only be here for a few short years.  And that’s not a morbid thought.  It’s the plain truth – the plain truth most of us are trying our best to forget. 

       Wise people remember.  They remember that they’re just passing through.  They live in the light of eternity, and that changes everything.

“Soon we shall be in eternity and then we shall see how little it mattered whether some things got done or not; however, right now we rush about as if they were all-important.  When we were little children, how eagerly we used to gather pieces of broken tile, little sticks and mud with which to build houses and other tiny buildings, and if someone knocked them over, how heartbroken we were and how we cried!  But now we understand that these things really didn’t amount to much.  One day it will be like this for us in heaven when we shall see that some of the things we clung to on earth were only childish attachments.  I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t care about these little games and trifling details of life, for God wants us to practice on them in this world; but I would like to see you not so strained and frantic in your concern about them.  Let’s play our childish games since we are children; but at the same time, let’s not take them too seriously.  And if someone wrecks our little houses or projects, let’s not get too upset, because when night falls and we have to go indoors – I’m speaking of our death – all those little houses will be useless; we shall have to go into our Father’s house.” Christian Perfection, Francois Fenelon (b. 1651)