Rejoice Evermore

After our unplanned visit to the cemetery (see below), my mind drifted back to a scene from the final episode of the John Adams miniseries on HBO. Adams is now almost 90 years old, having outlived his wife, several of his children, and all of his contemporaries (except Thomas Jefferson). His health failing, Adams looks and moves like a very old man. Yet on a sunny day at Peacefield, his Massachusetts farm, Adams takes a walk on a country lane with one of his sons. “I am not tired of life,” he says. “I still have hope.” Pausing to catch his breath, he bends over slightly. “It’s time to go home, father,” his son tells him.

As Adams turns to slowly walk back to the house, he says, “Abigail often told me I needed to appreciate the beauty of small things more than I do. She was right. Now I find that if I look at the smallest thing, my imagination begins to roam the Milky Way.”

And so I thought about that all weekend. Life is so short for all of us, we come quickly, we leave quickly, we will all be buried someday. But oh, how precious is the gift of life, and how blessed we are to be here. What sadness if we go through life complaining about our misfortune, focused on ourselves, and blind to all the beauty that God has placed in our path.

Rejoice evermore.