Conference vaxcat::friends

236.0. "Dedicated to departed loved ones" by FRSBEE::DREYER (Make new friends, but keep the old!) Tue Aug 02 1994 13:47

 This is dedicated to all those that have lost people who are precious to
 them, as we all do.  I had the pastor read these at my mother's funeral,
 and find these readings very comforting.






                                               Copied without permission
                                               from "The Gifts of Life and Love"
                                               By Ben Zion Bokser



                        Of Time and Life


 Time is the duration of life and life is God's creation.  And part of what
 God created when He created life is a span of time for each creature to be 
 born, to grow, to attain its maturing, to decline and to pass away from the
 scene of its labors.  By the way we live, by the play of circumstances, we may
 fall short of the time allotted to us, or we may hold on to the time of our
 life and live it to its maximum possibility.  But there is an end to every life
 under the sun, and rich man or poor man, the great and the humble alike are
 subject to the same law.  They must all live within a boundary, a boundary of
 time, and when they near the edge of the boundary they must be ready to bow
 out from the scene.

 We grieve when somebody dear to us has reached the boundary, and it is right
 that we grieve.  But our grief is mitigated by the knowledge that every day
 of life is the renewal of a miracle, the miracle of life, and if those we have
 lost are precious to us, then we must be grateful for whatever time they were
 permitted to be at our side.  Nor must we be upset when we ourselves come to
 the boundary.  There is just so much in the cup of wine.  Drink what you are
 given and be glad that you were privileged to taste the wine of life.  And when
 you have reached the end, graciously pass the cup to other hands waiting to
 receive it.
                                               Copied without permission
                                               from "The Gifts of Life and Love"
                                               By Ben Zion Bokser



                        Death is Not Extinction



 Death is not a total extinction of life; it is like the sculptor's smashing
 of a clay model.  The form is destroyed; but it returns to its raw matter out 
 of which the artist will attempt some new creation.

 In the economy of God's universe, there is a conservation of elements.  We may
 disintegrate an atom, but the essence survives in the stupendous energy which
 has been released.  Similarly death cannot destroy the body or the soul.  The
 body returns to the treasury of primordial earth from which all physical life
 emerges and to which it returns.  It decomposes into its constituent elements 
 and continues to be part of the cycle of unending existance.  The soul is
 invisible and it returns to its invisible living source.  And if we have lived
 with any beauty or goodness during the span of our years, then that beauty has
 entered the permanent resevoir of life's assets, and it will continue to
 exist in newer incarnations; our deeds will be an inspiration to other lives.

 Even our individuality is not wholly lost.  For the seeds of immortality have
 been planted in us, and out of these seeds spring new life.  For the creator
 is infinitely resourceful and He emplys the same stuff of life in eternally
 novel ways.  Yet in that new life, we live on, for it is flesh of our flesh
 and spirit of our spirit.

 Destruction is a prelude to new creation It enables the Architect of our 
 existance to wipe clean the slate at intervals and to start over again.  The
 loss of the old is vindicated in the new - in the fairer copy which comes
 after it.