ABApologetics.org
By: W.A. Dillard
An
immigrant, not privileged to formal education signed her name Le—a.
After three wrong guesses the immigration officer asked her to
pronounce her name. She replied in haltering English, “Tha dash not
silent. It be LeDASHa!”
Perhaps this story brings a chuckle to
those who hear it, but there is a great truth to be gleaned from it.
The dash really is not silent! How many times have you casually
strolled through a cemetery? As you read the tombstones, you always
saw two dates. The first one was the date of birth of the individual
interred there. The second date was the date of death. In between
those two dates is a dash. That dash represents all the years that
particular individual lived on earth and interacted with others. What
about all those years? What happened in the dash? Was that person
loved and loving? Did he or she trust in Christ Jesus as their
personal Savior? Did they serve Him with the force of their life?
Were they a blessing to others, ready for that last date to
arrive?
The inscriptions on the stone may identify the entombed
person as a unique individual, separated from all others, but it is
the dash that contains the multifaceted story of a life that was
known among us. That dash represents joy, love, responsibility,
opportunity, and all other things sandwiched between two important
dates: the beginning and the end. What are we writing into the “dash”
of our own unique dates? Wisdom bids us to hasten to do the things
that are good, the things that we would. For as surely as you have a
birthday, you also have a death-day. But these are not the things
people will remember you for, and they are not the things that are
important in heaven’s record. It is the dash, friends. The dash is
not silent, it is the sum of earthly life!
In Spirit and In Truth The Word 