What Will You Tell Them?
It might be like this. You have been endowed with the experiences of
life: the joy the happiness, the suffering the pain. The
accomplishments, the trials, the successes, the failures. You have
experienced how it is to struggle and succeed and how to endure yet fail.
You will remember wet rain on a cold day, the hardships of labor, the
accomplishment of building. The stacking, the storing, the shaping and
skills you learned and used in work. We will answer to the Lord and then
I wonder if the Cherubims might not gather around and want to hear about
our experience. Their enthusiasm will be like that of little children,
hanging on to our every word, wanting to know our feelings, or goals, or
desires, our joy and pain. They will endeavor to re-live the experience
with us.
They will want to know your comfort and pain, the successes and
failures you endured. They will want to know what the sun felt like when
you got out of the water, and how the sand felt between your toes on a
warm day. They won't understand the light shining through the trees in a
cool crisp morning in the forest and the smell of the flowers or the
hustle of the city. You will remember how you prepared for meeting
someone important, and most of all you will remember how it felt to
comfort someone in need. The cherubim may gather around and want to hear
it all. There will be thousands, maybe millions, billions, more than we
can count, and they will want to hear what it was like to have this
magnificent gift from God. They will want to know how you lived, how you
endured, how you felt, how you learned. They will want to know how you
built and how forged on, in the shadow of pain and suffering and how you
built up and made yourself strong. They will want to know how it felt to
hold a baby in your arms, how you taught the young, helped the old, what
is was like to play with a dog, and your accomplishments and endurance at
work. They will want to know every detail of the life you lived and we
will remember, over time, as they gather and listen to what we have to
say. What will you tell them?
They may be disappointed when you turned away when you saw someone
suffering. They may not understand why we didn't console a fellow human
being when we had the opportunity to assuage their pain. They may not
understand why we were so preoccupied with the intangible and consumed
with pride and arrogance in order to feel better about ourselves, when it
didn't matter. Will they understand how we could let suffering happen in
the World while we were part of it, and had an opportunity to help, to
speak out, or comfort, or provide shelter, or food, encourage those so
endowed around us, to speak out against war and prison and greed and
slander. Instead they will wonder, why did we tear down and covet that
which would rust and rot away. They may wonder why we did not teach the
values we were taught to the next generation. What will you tell them
about the life you were given?
