There’s nothing like an invitation to dinner. It gives your heart a warm glow to know that someone is thinking of you. Not only are they thinking of you, but they desire your company! So badly do they want to spend time with you, that they will give you food - FREE!
So imagine my joy when I received an unsolicited piece of mail last week that heralded the phrase “You are cordially invited to join us for dinner. Seats are reserved in your name. Tickets enclosed.” (By the way, have you ever been invited to dinner ‘uncordially’?)
I felt loved. Special. Privileged. The gratitude chemicals flooded by brain, and my heart swelled a couple of sizes.
So I tore open the invitation to see who it was that cherished my presence at their dinner. Then my joy shriveled. My heart returned to its normal size; actually, it shrank to a few sizes smaller that it had been before I received the invitation. My feeling of belovedness vanished like the mist in the morning sun. My sense of specialness was bulldozed by the harsh reality. They don’t want me – they want my business.
Yes, it was a sophisticated piece of advertising - junk mail designed to seduce the money from my wallet with the promise of a free meal. It didn’t work. In fact it did the reverse. I feel pretty unhappy about that company. Now that I know they will stoop to such transparently self-serving gestures of goodwill, my view of them has changed. And not for the better.
But here’s the icing on the cake of cynicism. IT WAS FROM AN UNDERTAKERS! That’s right, I’ve reached the age when funeral directors send me unsolicited letters to try to get my business. When did I grow so old that I became the target of the Grim Reaper’s junk mail? Do undertakers have a strategy - “OK, fellas. As soon as someone in our catchment area hits 63 let’s tell them that they’re going to die soon and sell them a funeral.” Genius.
Mind you, they have a point. I am going to die soon. Probably not sooner than some folks, but certainly sooner than most. "Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom", says Psalm 90:2. With this in mind, I now thank the undertakers for their invitation. I’m still not going to go to dinner with them, but at least they have reminded me of a deep and urgent truth. I’m going to die, and God is calling me to live in the light of that fact. Lord have mercy.