I used to live across the street from a small cemetery. Each morning, after arising, I would go to the large patio window facing the old tombstones and I was reminded of the brevity of life. Yes, we all shall die. From dust we came, and to dust we shall return. But the daily look at the graveyard, along with each day’s walk with Bob the bloodhound through the cemetery, was much more than a future reminder of what awaits us all; it was also a very present call in dying to self and living for Christ.

One way of looking at our lives is to discern that they are a pilgrimage into the inner depths of our souls. As we move within, there is a great need to put away selfishness, arrogance, and the hubris of settled certainty about everything. When I became an adult, I discovered that life was not all about doing whatever I wanted (as I so naively thought as a kid). Instead, life was also full of responsibilities, stewarding my work, school, and relationships.

I found that if I were to do anything well, it involved a significant degree of dying to self. When I married my lovely wife, I quickly discovered that marriage was a whole lot more than sex and being fed grapes from a beautiful woman while lounging on the couch. Instead, it was a new journey of dying to self, to my expectations, and learning to meet the needs of this other person. And just when I thought I might be getting a handle on this new way of life I became a father. Then my whole life seemed upside-down in caring for this helpless little baby girl who only seemed to scream and poop if she was not sleeping and eating. My goodness, more dying to self and awake to living so that I may care for another.

I could go on and on with this motif of death and dying to self (the Apostle Paul did! Romans 6).  Caring for others as a pastor and a chaplain; becoming a grandfather; being attentive to the great needs of society and the world; it all involves being reminded each day that the cemetery awaits me.

As I write this, the Church Year is beginning the season of Lent. Christians across the world are engaging in spiritual practices which remind them of Jesus Christ’s life and death. The coming of Christ is quite the fascinating and gracious reality. If you think about it, Jesus could have just appeared on earth. He could have shown up as a fully developed adult ready for his ministry. Jesus could have circumvented the whole thing about experiencing the pain of growing and learning, especially of facing torture and execution.

But, instead, Jesus came to earth through a woman. The King of the universe gestated in the womb of Mary and was born in humble circumstances. Christ was a baby, a child, a young man, a teacher, and Savior. Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered (Hebrews 2:10-18). And then he died. Yet, death could not hold him in the grave.

When I used to look at that old cemetery I was also reminded of a bigger picture, and a larger portrait God is painting. I would daily learn, and have continued discovering even now, the ways of dying to self so that Christ might live in me. Jesus must grow and gestate within, overtaking me so that Christ’s life might be preeminent.  More of Jesus, less of me. He must increase; I must decrease.

However, out of dying to self, something extraordinary and supernatural occurs. Living for Jesus is an extraordinary resurrection to new life. Someday, just as Christ came in his first Advent, he will come again in a second Advent. The graves will open. With the presence of the living Christ in me, I shall rise again, just as he did.

There cannot be a resurrection without a death. All great spiritualities have in common the need to let go in dying to self. Christianity just puts it in the frame of living for Jesus so that the world will be blessed by encountering the great truth that Christ is the great Immanuel, God with us.

The graveyard does not have the last word. It is a daily reminder in dying to self. Yet it is also an abiding picture that new life is possible through that death, both in this life and in the life to come. This is the hope which the Christian has, that there is glory at the end of suffering, an amazing life as the result of dying to self.