I was recently thinking about all the days that have slipped from the future through the present and are now in “the past.” On my birthday this past June my day count was 26,280. Where did all those experiences and events go? I once heard that there is an economy in all of creation. When something dies it goes into the earth but comes back in another life form. If that is true, do past days come back in a new way, a way we never noticed. Is there really nothing new under the sun as King Solomon once wrote: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”  Ecclesiastes 1:9 (ESV)

This got me wondering about other things, things I cannot understand. For example, musicians in a band or orchestra. How is it that some have such talent, they don’t even need music notes in front of them. They can just play by ear. And others seem to have a deep music memory which allows them to sing and play a guitar, piano or drum at the same time. Where does this talent come from and where does it go when they die? Does it come back in someone else, but in a different form (eg. jazz genre instead of classic)? I sometimes hear that a certain song reminds someone of something they heard when they were a youngster. Sometimes I find myself reliving an experience when I hear a certain song.

As I continue along my 7th decade on earth, it often feels that things and people are going away from me. There is a kind of grief that goes with such feelings. My Christian faith, however, tells me that they are not gone forever, there are words in the New Testament which says that what seems to be the final end, death, will actually lead to the resurrection of believers when all our questions and wonderings will be answered. I am sure of this because of what the Apostle Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthian Church: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (1 Corinthians, Chapter 13, verses 11 and 12 English Standard Version)