THE GRAVE BECKONS: REVISITED
By Babatunde Jose
Percy Shelley wrote ‘The Flower That Smiles Today’. The first two lines of the poem, which is sometimes known as ‘Mutability’, is about the brevity of all things – all hopes, aspirations, desires, and delights the world has to offer are short-lived and doomed to die. Everything is fleeting and transitory. Shelley himself would be dead before the age of 30, after drowning in a storm at sea.
With the evening of life, the grave beckons, as the half-way mark between birth and death is long past. What remains can never be as much as what has been. It is self-delusional for man to arrogate immortality to himself; Awaiye Iku osi. No man born of woman will live forever. We must all taste death: When, how, where and time is all determined by God. To this extent therefore we are enjoined to put our house in order so that after our translation, there would be no hiatus.
Morning, afternoon, and evening can be described as a similitude of the three phases of life on earth. As we grow older into the ‘sundown’ of life, one should deeply reflect and do a spiritual stocktaking of all one’s deeds with a view to making amends, ameliorate, correct, repent, and make restitution where necessary.
We should also ensure we check the litmus test of family ties and do the needful where it demands. We should also secure the home front.
There is no doubt; our life on this divide is in stages. Where the trajectory of life is straight without challenges and untoward happenings, we would walk through the gamut of the morning and afternoon of life. On reaching the evening of life, we would start preparations for the sundown. A period which is best spent in retrospection.
The bottom line of this stage of life is the putting of our house in order. Only a foolish man will live in denial and say that he still has time in the evening of life. The Lord said in the good book; Psalm 90:10-12 ‘The days of our lives are seventy years; And if by reason of strength they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; For it is soon cut off, and we fly away. . . . . So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Men are led by reflections upon the brevity of time to give their earnest attention to eternal things; they become humble as they look to the grave, which is soon to be their bed, their passions cool in the presence of mortality, and they yield themselves up to the dictates of unerring wisdom: A short life should be wisely spent. We have not enough time at our disposal to justify us in misspending a single quarter of an hour. Neither are we sure of enough life to justify us in procrastinating for a moment. If we were wise in heart, we should see this. The more reason why we should ask God to teach us to number our days.
Many are rich beyond contemplation but lack the wherewithal to plan their exit. They fumble from one misdeed to another causing untold misery to their offspring during their demise.
I had an uncle who lived a double life till he died. Right in the same city he had two families. On hearing the news of his death, the other family sent emissaries to verify at his home. When it was realized that it was true, they decided to introduce themselves to his widow, who directed them to the family elders. The children needed no introduction as the eldest one was a spitting image of my uncle. What ended the matter is your guess. By the way, my uncle was not an illiterate, but a learned fellow who was called to the English Bar and at various times served as a Director of Public Prosecution, Chief Magistrate and finally Chief Registrar of the State High Court: But he failed to put his house in order.
As a result of the failure to tidy their affairs, many have made a mess of their legacy. A classic case of the Yoruba adage ‘baale’le ku ile d’ahoro’; when the patriarch is n more, the homestead becomes desolate.
That the grave beckon is not a morbid thought but a reality check.
It is evident, that what needed to make men provide for eternity, is the practical persuasion that they have but a short time to live.
Henry Melvill wrote: “The grain does not always germinate – but every man dies. The needle does not always point due north – but every man dies. The sun does not cross the horizon in every place in every twenty-four hours – but every man dies. Yet we must pray – pray as for the revelation of a mystery hidden from our gaze – we must pray to be made to know – to be made to believe – that every man dies!”
“For I call it not belief, and our text calls it not belief, in the shortness of life and the certainty of death, which allows men to live without thought of eternity, without anxiety as to the soul, or without an effort to secure to themselves salvation. I call it not belief – no, no, anything rather than belief. Men are rational beings, beings of forethought, disposed to make provision for what they feel to be inevitable; and if there were not a practical infidelity as to their own mortality, they could not be practically reckless as to their own safety.”
Today we make a crossing into another year, reducing the time we have left in this world. As my late wife once said, shortly before she died: Life is short. The grave beckons; are you ready?
Barka Juma’at, and Happy New Year.
Babatunde Jose
