"... i know.... there is so much more..."

I couldn't help but think philosophically a few nights ago. A man zoomed past my friend and I on a motorcycle, most likely hitting 100 mph. We commented blithely about the way he was driving and didn't give it another moment. Twenty minutes later we pass a horrifying wreck, the center of the freeway a sickening picture of mangled and burned machines. In the middle of that destruction, a sheet covering two bodies already gone, and ambulances racing to reach the ones still with hope to save. A motorcycle, charred and smashed, lies on the ground. A motorcycle looking too much like the one that raced past us. We have no idea if that was the man who had flown by us, but really we did know. The feeling hit us both at the same time, and we couldn't believe that we most likely saw that person's last moments in this life. Others died as well, and that impact will most likely reverberate through whole communities and families.

Sitting at the airport last night, I was watching planes land and passengers board to start their own journeys. The gate I was had flights coming in from Seattle, the city I was bound for. And it struck me of how mundane yet meaningful that circle is. As I concluded my adventures in San Diego this week, someone was just starting theirs. And as I landed in Seattle, someone was leaving that same place for somewhere else. We seem to move in this bland rotation of humanity, coming and going, talking or not talking, living or not living, trying or not trying. The planes will still take off, and they'll still land somewhere they were supposed to land.

Thinking of that tied together with the accident I saw. There was likely nothing extraordinary about the journey any of those cars involved were taking. Someone probably called their spouse or loved one, letting them know they'd be home late. Maybe someone didn't have anyone to call so they just sat in silence. Maybe one of them was just playing music. But all of them were likely in that same circle... of coming back from a place they'd just been. And without warning, the journey ended for some of them. Our lives are so complex and involved, yet our fragility is what makes it all worth living. Who but the Lord knows when our work on earth is done? Were they ready to meet the Father? Am I?

As time as gone on, I've become less and less afraid of death. This is mostly because I am sure beyond all doubt that my journey just gets going once I go to be with my Father. My only dread that late night came as I watched those covered bodies, wondering if they had been ready. I wondered if they were afraid or if they lived their lives knowing there was a final reward for those who believe in Him.

One of my favorite books of all time is called "The Last Battle", a book by C.S. Lewis from the Chronicles of Narnia series. The very last lines of the book are my very favorite, because in a way that all people, even children barely in grade school can understand, Lewis puts the idea of the final reward into beautiful clarity. The children were finished with their adventure and worried that Aslan would send them back to their earth now that the evil had been defeated.

Then Aslan turned to them and said:

"You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be."

Lucy said, "We're so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often."

"No fear of that," said Aslan. "Have you not guessed?"

Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.

"There was a real railway accident," said Aslan softly. "Your father and mother and all of you are--as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands--dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning." And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

Who can be afraid with hope of eternity like that?