Someone sent me an email the other day with a link to a video about a poem someone read at a funeral and it got me to thinking about my life. It's funny how facing death makes us aware of life.

I suppose I've spent a great deal of my life confusing people around me by moving from one project to another, riding one cloud after another. Those who stick around long enough eventually realize that there is a method to my perceived madness and even though it appears that I weave in and out, I usually move in a particular direction, moving closer to a particular goal, accomplishing a particular task. If you were to ask me why, I may not be able to give you a clear answer. It's just what I do. What I accomplish becomes the ink that writes the dash between the date when I was born and the date when I die. It's a short line, almost imperceptible and easily ignored by those who are not paying attention. It's merely punctuation in the great mystery of life.

How depressing!

We all have a story to tell, but sadly, most people don't stick around long enough to hear it. Someday, I'll die and when I do, my story will be over and my dash will be written, engraved in stone. I'll never be able to add to it or erase what has been written. My words, my music and writings, everything I have said and done will eventually be forgotten, perhaps even before my body is lowered into the ground or my ashes sprinkled into the wind. Perhaps no one ever listened and I was merely wasting my time, talking to myself the whole time. They give me a dash, stamp the date and life goes on for everyone else but me. How fair is that?

No one wants to be forgotten. We all want to be remembered. We want to leave our mark on the world. We want to be missed when we're gone. We want our life to have been worthwhile, not reduced to a single, nugatory dash, a misunderstood element of punctuation. I hate the idea that everything I have done will eventually be relegated to a dash. Is that all I get for my trouble? All that I do eventually becomes a dash? I am nothing more than punctuation?

That email with a link from my friend was rather depressing when I thought about it. It actually got me down for a bit, but then I thought about it some more.

My life may eventually become nothing more than punctuation, but punctuation is the collection of jots and tittles that maintain order in everything that is written. Nothing would make sense without it. Punctuation clarifies the meaning of sentences, and the dash, the hyphen plays a noble role. Unlike the comma or period, colon or semicolon, the dash doesn't separate. It joins. It connects two words and makes them one. It is also placed between syllables divided at the end of a line of text. So whereas one line in life is interrupted, the dash joins with another to complete the sentence. The dash joins and perpetuates.

If when I die, my life is considered nothing more than a dash, then I can rest in peace knowing that somehow, I successfully joined something together and kept something from ending, because life doesn't end with a dash. It's just beginning. And by the way, my wife has added great length, width and depth to my dash.


Live Well
Laugh Often
Love Much
Leave With a Dash


- Rod
(notice the dash)

Micah 6:8

• Topic: Devotionals

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