Address Book 12-9-9

Anderson, South Carolina

Some kinds of cleaning can be really sobering. I think specifically of going back through an address book or church directory and deleting entries for those people that have moved out of our world and have since fallen below the sweep of our radar screens. Even various Internet search programs fail to find them. I wonder how it is that I could have gone so long without even thinking of these people. Even more compelling are those people who are no longer in any world - those who became deceased since the last time we went through our books.

In the past eight weeks I have been to the funerals of three good friends. The weeks before found me at several other funerals of acquaintances. It is disquieting to recognize all the employees at a large funeral home and to have them all identify me. I must attend their activities entirely too often. There is some kind of teachable moment emerging in my consciousness at this point. It is certain I am going to one day be one of their customers and not just a visitor to the festivities. I am going to get to ride in the big car up front of the procession. Fifteen minutes in the limelight and then eternity in the dark.

It is so easy to get caught up in the urgent but unimportant things of our lives. One day we find ourselves wondering why we are suddenly foundering and having great difficulty with making decisions or getting anything of consequence completed. We wonder why we no longer hear from long-time friends. Our mutual busyness and shared tyranny of the urgent assures the destruction of once-precious relationships. We wonder how it is that once-vibrant daily friendships devolve into ever rarer phone calls, then the occasional e-mail, and then horror of horrors, nothing more than a random group-forwarded e-mail. A man and his wife I once saw every day and who considered me the second father to their four children now make no contact with me other than an inane forwarded group e-mail about every six months. My real letters go unanswered. I have no idea who all those dozens of people are listed in the header. They were never part of my world. My dear friends are no longer part of my world either.

Recently at a church dinner, I was speaking with a woman who has awakened some enthusiasm on my part over the past months for conversation and perhaps undistracted time to grow a friendship. After a year of random distracted encounters, she appeared quite enthusiastic about this also. After the evening activities were finished I asked her for a phone number. She told me I could find it in the phone book. Immediately thereafter she launched into a litany of all the religious activity she was doing that would make this undistracted time really not feasible. Alas, I don’t think there is going to be a new entry in my address book.

In the gospels a wake up call is offered about losing track of important relationships, perhaps on missing out on even matriculating into ones that might really matter. In one scenario, a group of religious people are expounding to Jesus about all the great things they were doing for Him in His name when He stops them in their tracks and says He has no idea who they are, that He doesn’t even know them. He then charged them to be gone. None such as these will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. We are told that Jesus cares only about our successes in building and maintaining relationships with each other and with God. Our frantic religious and material activities don’t count in the final accounting by which our lives will be measured. I have often lamented how religious activity on Sundays suffocates most meaningful encounters in church.

There are untold millions of Americans who are finding out very painfully that McMansions and Beemers do not assure one’s long-term inclusion in the address books that matter. Millions of times now the lenders have told them to take a hike - often to homelessness. Many of these people will have to file change-of-address address cards at the post office. Many don’t even have a forwarding address. People who have made the pursuit of materialism and status into a personal religious quest so often find themselves without friends, a house, or even a car. More tragically they often have failed to make sure their names are included in the ultimate address book - The Lamb’s Book of Life.

The Revelation of John makes it clear there is a simple procedure whereby the book is opened up and if our names are found therein we are invited to enter into that place where things are found “which no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and the heart of men have not even imagined.” We are told if our names are not found there we are to be sent out into a place of darkness where there is much pain, gnashing of teeth, and shedding of tears.

Even those of us who think we have right priorities are finding out how temporal things are in this life. My once iron-clad blue chip portfolio imploded and I watched my mother lode lose 95% of its value, forcing me to look for another place to really find my security and to put my trust. I have seen many people around me lamenting of similar misfortunes.

It would seem that the best thing any of us could do now is to keep our address books current, being careful to maintain the relationships that matter and to be sure our name is written into the Lamb’s Book of Life. Seeking a true personal relationship with God, to gain conscious contact with Him is the only thing that is rock solid and triple A rated.

As helpful as the staff are here at the funeral home, they are quite unable to make address changes in our address books or to send a correction to the Lamb’s Book of Life. That is something we have to do for ourselves. Now! Timing may not be a successful investment strategy but it is critical to one’s return on life.

“For a little while longer the light is among you. Walk while you have the light, that darkness may not overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes. While you have the light,, believe in the light, in order that you may become sons of light.”