What Can I Do About Death? or Eat, Drink & Be Merry, for Tomorrow We Die

Isle of the Dead, Port Arthur, Tasmania, Australia

Today is St Patrick’s Day. But why are we celebrating? Many people are wearing green, wearing shamrocks and drinking beer. But why? You may know that St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, and today it’s all about Ireland. But why a special day? What’s the true story?

Last year I wrote St Patrick’s Day – 17 March explaining the history of 16 year-old Patrick who was kidnapped from his British village by Irish pirates. He was sold as a slave and put to work as a pig shepherd. After six years of slavery, he escaped. Two years later he finally made it back home. Patrick studied to become a priest and bishop. He returned to barbaric Ireland to spread the good news of Jesus. He journeyed throughout Ireland, sharing the good news about Jesus Christ until his death on 17^th March, around 460 A.D. It is believed that Patrick used the symbol of the shamrock to illustrate the Trinity – God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

St Patrick’s Day tragedy

Today I thought I would just refer to last year’s blog. But now it’s taken a different turn. When doing research on St Patrick’s day this year, I read about a tragic accident at a St Patrick’s Day parade in Louisville, USA, Woman killed in St Patricks Day Parade.

How terrible! How sad! Words cannot express how awful this must be for this woman’s family. Louisville Mayor, Craig Greenberg, asked people to keep the woman’s family and friends in their prayers. He said, “May her memory be a blessing.”

Life is short

I don’t know anything about the dead woman. All I know is that one minute she was walking along in a happy parade, laughing and celebrating. The next, she was dead. I doubt she, or her family were ready for this. I wonder if they had ever asked themselves, “What can I do about death?”

One day, that could be you or me. Just going along, doing life as best we can, and then dead. Or maybe, we’ll get a terminal diagnosis and have years of warning before we die. Either way, eventually, everyone dies. And that’s TERRIBLE! But what can I do about it?

Is death just part of the cycle?

Death is bad. Yes, it happens to everyone, but that doesn’t make it right. Some may say it’s just part of the cycle of nature. We come from nothing, and then we go to nothing, just becoming compost for the garden. That sounds like a hopeless cycle. We’re just the product of random chance, and our life’s legacy is just to make fertilizer. God, however, says our lives have eternal importance. You are so important to God that He sent Jesus who gave up EVERYTHING for you! Jesus gave up His life, so that you could live forever in heaven:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16

Death is an enemy

The Bible says death is bad. It’s the last enemy:

The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
1 Corinthians 15:26

Are you ready to die?

Perhaps you are nonchalant about death. After all, it’s one of the few certainties in life. Or perhaps you just ignore it, thinking it won’t happen to you, at least for a very long time. Maybe you are deliberately doing nothing about it, because you’re too busy to bother, or think you’ll have plenty of time to consider doing something, but many years from now.

Or perhaps you think about death a lot. You think you can do something about death. You do everything in your power to prevent it – doing all sorts of exercises and eating all sorts of nutrients and supplements designed to prolong your life.

Perhaps you take all sorts of precautions to prevent anything happening to you. You are very careful about anything that might be even a bit dangerous. But, when you hide from all risk, are you missing out on all the joy that God intends for your life?

Perhaps you, or someone close to you, has been given a terminal diagnosis. Now death is always on your mind. Perhaps you have been told to be strong, and to fight it. But we can’t fight off death forever. It’s coming for every one of us.

You know death is coming, but you don’t know when. How should you spend the time you have left? How can you prepare? Should you even bother? Maybe just work very hard to tick off the bucket list. Maybe your motto is: “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.”

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die

You might be surprised, as I was, to learn that this saying comes from the Bible:

A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God.
Ecclesiastes 2:24

So, I commended enjoyment, because a man has nothing better under the sun than to eat, drink, and be merry; for this will remain with him in his labour all the days of his life which God gives him under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 8:15 (NKJV)

In these verses, we are encouraged to enjoy our lives, recognising that, no matter how long we live, God has given us all our days.

However, the Bible also uses this saying to caution us against living a self-indulgent life:

The Lord, the Lord Almighty, called you on that day to weep and to wail, to tear out your hair and put on sackcloth. But see, there is joy and revelry, slaughtering of cattle and killing of sheep, eating of meat and drinking of wine! “Let us eat and drink,” you say, “for tomorrow we die!”
Isaiah 22:12-13

In Luke 12, Jesus told the parable of the rich fool who said to himself, “Eat, drink and be merry”:

And he told them this parable: The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.”

Then he said, “This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’”

But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?”

This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.
Luke 12:16-21