Having several songs published in hymn books over the years, I’m used to seeing next to my name, in many an author index: Jamie Harvill (1960- ). It’s comforting to know that the blank space remains; it lets me know that I have a future!
Author Kevin Welsh wrote: “There’ll be two dates on your tombstone and all your friends will read them. But all that is going to matter is that little dash between them.” That dash represents our legacy. Maya Angelou has said: “…Your legacy is what you do everyday; it’s every life you’ve touched; it’s every person whose life was either moved or not; it’s every person you harmed or helped—that’s your legacy!’ What does that “dash” say of my life, even now, before my earthly journey is completed?
The older I get as a Christ-follower, the more clear it becomes that during much of that “dash” God is helping me to be conformed to the likeness of Christ. It represents surrender—an ongoing opportunity to be made better as a human and as a child of God. Paul, in Romans 5:4-5, says: “…we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (NIV).
Sometimes life is filled with extreme difficulty, but it can also be filled with great joy. And in the span of our lives, the thing that really matters is that we love God and love people.
Walking past a cemetery, it’s obvious that none of those interred there are ambitious, hungry, chasing after riches, or trying to “one-up” the neighbors. None of that matters to them—they’ve come to the end of their journey. As Christ-followers, God’s been trying to get us to die to ourselves, forsaking the temporal for a greater reward in heaven, where we’ll hunger, thirst, worry and feel pain no more. While still living within the dash, we can rise to meet God’s purpose for us, as the writer David Roper says: “To make us great.”
This goal is not a part of the American Dream that we’ve been taught since infancy. Many continue to define the “Dream” as: owning a home and having a happy family, with some success often referred to as physical comfort and financial security.
In the T.S. Eliot poem, “Ash Wednesday,” Dante’s concept of the “low and high dream” is referenced: The “low dream” is to live for oneself, but the “high dream” is to live for the will of God.
Let’s forsake the American Dream, with its “low dream” aspirations of seeking comfort, for a life filled with opportunities to grow as Christ-followers, and to prepare for the glorious presence of God we will experience into eternity—while we still have “dash” left between the dates.