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Show me, O Lord, my life’s end, and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure (Psalm 39:4,5).

Standing at a bassinet, delighting in new birth, we are often unnerved by how fragile life can be. Struck by the raw beauty of a small baby, we ponder the potential of life, wondering what joys and pains this child will both experience and give. At death, we also find ourselves faced with that frailness, but not with the promise of potential greatest or filled with the fullness of hope. At death, the frailness of life can leave us empty with despair.

As a community of faith, we find ourselves in that space today as we participate in Kevin Holkema’s funeral. We cannot be faulted for finding life rather brief, a vapour, a mist, a breath; over too soon; too easily ended. That is where death brings us. We ask deep questions. Who are we? What are we here for?

We may deceive ourselves with the busy-ness of life, thinking we are more important than we really are. Our great plans may cause us to think we are indestructible. We reach for the stars. Yet, in all our bustle and activity, we are still mere phantoms. Death makes us realize how little we are, how little control we have over the destiny of our hoarded wealth and ambition. It strips us of our illusions of self sufficiency and immortality.

That is David in the Psalm 39. He has looked at life and found it wanting. What caused David to number his days? The answer: intense suffering. Extreme pain opened David to a deep work of God in his life. Dejected and depressed, David cried out to God, pouring out his soul about how brief and fragile life is.

David could not figure out rationally the circumstances of his life, except that he was not innocent. He admits that some of his pain was God's discipline. But that did not nearly account for all the trouble he saw and experienced.

With nothing left for him, he turned to God. In the Lord was a firm hope. Here was a rock. David’s lifespan was nothing before God. Yet life itself was empty without God.

Life may be frail, but with God there is salvation. God sent his Son to take away the sting of death. Jesus chose to walk the road of suffering and the grave so that we might experience more than the frailty of life. Jesus said he came so that we might have life to the full (John 10:10). “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:38).

Jesus Christ came to break the bitterness of death. As he said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26). God shattered the midnight darkness of death by the light of an empty tomb. If there is nothing beyond the sunset and the dark, if death is a sleep from which there is no awakening, if the grave is the end of existence than our pilgrimage here is rather purposeless, intolerably pathetic, with little incentive for goodness.

Gloriously, however, something has happened to give us hope. Something has happened. Christ has been raised from the death. Something tremendous has a foothold in this darkened scene that has changed the face of this world. Christ has turned all our sunsets into dawns.

Today, we mourn. But we do so with hope. We hope in the resurrection. Jesus was the first, all who believe in him will follow. And while we wait for our own resurrection, we look to Christ’s blood for forgiveness for our sins and to his Spirit for the empowerment to keep doing what is right and good, “for our labour in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).