518

I wrote it down but I didn’t need to. As I looked at it on a Post-It Note I knew I need not have written it. I still took the note, putting it on the outside of my laptop computer; but I knew I didn’t need it. There are some numbers and letters I write down in case I forget them, I try to put them in places not obvious to others, but yet in places that I will remember in case I need them – of course sometimes when I need them I can’t find them even though I put them in a place that I would remember. Computer and security passwords are the classic ones in that category, and the systems that require you to change your password every so often are a challenge to me; but I knew I’d remember 518.

I’ve taken to using Greek when writing down passwords, if someone finds them and translates them more power to them, but it’s better than anything I’ve thought of so far; and let’s face it, the memory isn’t what it used to be. But 518, well 518 hit me when I heard it and I knew I need not have written it down.

Many of us will have our own 518 and most of us have no idea when we’ll have it; this is yet another example of why I’m glad I don’t have God’s foreknowledge. It’s hard enough to handle foreknowledge as a pet owner. I make an appointment for a dog to have surgery in two weeks and for two weeks I know about the surgery and the dog doesn’t. On the evening before the surgery the dog wonders why it didn’t get its evening treat, green beans in Lily and Lina’s case. On the morning of the surgery the dog wonders why it isn’t getting fed, have Mom and Dad forgotten? Is there no more puppy food in the house? What happened? When the dog and Dad and Mom get in the car the dog thinks it’s going for an outing (near as I can discern dog thoughts anyway). Even when we get to the vet’s the dog still doesn’t know that this isn’t the usual checkup. Nope – I can hardly handle what little bit of foreknowledge comes with being a pet owner – I’m right thankful I don’t have no more foreknowledge than what I have with my pets. It’s best that I don’t know about my own 518 or yours.

It strikes me that while most of us will have a 518, and that while all of us will have a place similar to 518 – whether outdoors or indoors – that we don’t think about it much; in fact most of us are on a quest of perpetual denial that there will ever be a 518 in our lives…or in the lives of those we love.

When I walked into 518 she was there, there with her husband and one of her daughters; two teenage granddaughters were stroking her arm. She was, as they say, “out of it”. She was my age, an age that looks younger all the time, an age that I actually enjoy. She was, however, heading for the exit door quicker than I am – though again you never know, and again I’m thankful I don’t have foreknowledge. She went through that door the following evening.

When I awoke the morning after her death one of my first thoughts was that this day will be my friend’s first day without his wife. He has never had a day like this and he’ll never have another day like this – this is the first day without his beloved. As a pastor I’m sure he’s had these same thoughts when walking with parishioners through times of separation, but now he’s the one waking up without a spouse, I hurt for him that morning and I hurt for him as I write this. Life is fragile and tomorrow it might be me or it might be Vickie; every day is precious…you just never know when on a certain date you’ll have your own 518.

That evening was not the last time my friend will see his wife for their marriage was rooted in Jesus Christ, their marriage drew its life from Jesus, and Jesus tells us that if we are in relationship with Him that we’ll never taste death. This isn’t hopeful thinking or denial or pie-in-the-sky smoke and mirrors. The longer I live the clearer I see that the eternal is real, that there is good and evil, love and wickedness; and that the things that really matter ought to be the things that matter – everything else is grownups playing with toys – whether those toys are boats or houses or corporate or political positions; just as children play as if they are adults, adults play as if they are God. Uncle Sam’s dollars are the same as Milton Bradley’s Monopoly money, it all goes back in the box when the game is over – what doesn’t go back in the box is the way we’ve lived our lives.

518; I really didn’t need to write it down.