My type of a guy !

My type of a guy !

Isn't that just like you, to think you can psych out death by treating it as an aesthetic device? This could be my father's voice, but it is my friend Peter's. Years earlier he had become a devout Catholic. When he read this text and made this comment, it was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, the last suffering days of his Savior's time on earth. My answer to Peter is this: I understand the finality of death, and do not make light of the end.

But my journey has led me to these conclusions, which I cannot deny so late in its course.

I have no faith in a life hereafter. But I will not be desperate over my own disappearance. If there is nothing further, what of it?
Why should I waste my time left in misery over what I cannot change?

The voice I could not answer was April's. "You're so arrogant,"- she rebuked me. "Think of what God has done for you. Look at the times He has looked after you, how He saved you from cancer. You need to show some gratitude. I need you to do this for me. If you don't believe, you won't be there when I come for you and I'll be alone. And I don't want to be without you."

I tried to soothe her. "Don't fret," I said. "If there is a God, I am sure He is merciful, and will not condemn me for my lack of faith. Life cannot be merely a test to see if God's children will believe."

I thought this reasoning effective, but the pain in her eyes would not quit She was already missing me.

Her distress caused me to reconsider what I had said. In fact, I had no answer. I was arrogant. If there was a God, how could I, in my mere mortality, know His plan? Maybe the whole idea was to see through the chaos and, through an act of faith, discover the divinity in it all. I had lived a charmed life, and had no explanation why. Once again I was forced to question what I had taken for granted and ask, Is it I who is blind?

"I'll think about it," I said.

"I don't want you to think,"- my wife replied. "I want you to open your heart."