From Conception to the Grave, The Journey to Our Homeland

From Conception to the Grave 
The Journey to Our Homeland 
Deacon Jonathan 2 /12/2026 
We all come into this life as a blank canvas, much of the time we try to paint the picture that we want the world to see instead of allowing God to paint with broad strokes and vivid colors, so we become what he intended. Conception is the beginning of this work of art; the very foundation of His intentions and goal for our lives, the very core of who we are. Today the brightness of God's creation has become darkened, stripped of all wonder and amazement, degraded to just a clump of cells. This wonderful work of art by Gods creating hand has become a thing to be cast by the wayside and accounted as nothing of value. Once again to walk in the garden in the cool of the evening. So much of the time, like Adam and Eve, we allow the pride of life and the lust of the eyes to paint on the canvas of our lives, to obscure the very image of what God wants to create. Psalms 139 gives us a glimpse into the wonder of God’s creating hand.   
 “13For it was you who formed my inward parts; 
you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 
14I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. 
Wonderful are your works; 
that I know very well. 
15My frame was not hidden from you, 
when I was being made in secret, 
intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 
16Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. 
In your book were written 
all the days that were formed for me, 
when none of them as yet existed.” 
 The journey away from God often comes during the formative years. Either consciously or sub-consciously, we start to make choices that either lead us closer to God or further away from him. As we move further along this path that we call life, we embrace or reject these choices, becoming what we choose. Do we allow God to remold us into his image and likeness? This is our journey from the time that we enter this world to the time that we leave, we allow or disallow what God has for us. It’s the dash between birth and the grave; this makes up the canvas of our lives. We spend so much of our time living out what the world wants and expects, not what Gods expects or wants.  He doesn’t force or impose his will on us; he leads, guides and suggests what colors to paint with.  It’s the dash that God uses to prepare us for the time that we are to leave this life and enter the next. What is it that we see, hear and smell as we prepare to end this journey? How thin does that veil get that shrouds this life from the next? What do we see when we look into the mirror of our souls? Do we see the broad stroke and vivid colors that God has for us, or do we see the black and the grays of a life that has been lived without color. God brings us all to that place in our journey where our next breath is the one that takes us from this life to the next. How did God work in our lives to prepare us for that moment, that encounter with the ever-living God? Saint Cyprian puts this moment of our lives in the best light. 
Let us banish the fear of death and think of the eternal life that follows it 
“Our obligation is to do God’s will, and not our own. We must remember this if the prayer that our Lord commanded us to say daily is to have any meaning on our lips. How unreasonable it is to pray that God’s will be done, and then not promptly obey it when he calls us from this world! Instead, we struggle and resist like self-willed slaves and are brought into the Lord’s presence with sorrow and lamentation, not freely consenting to our departure, but constrained by necessity. And yet we expect to be rewarded with heavenly honors by him to whom we come against our will! Why then do we pray for the kingdom of heaven to come if this earthly bondage pleases us? What is the point of praying so often for its early arrival if we would rather serve the devil here than reign with Christ. 
We ought never to forget, beloved, that we have renounced the world. We are living here now as aliens and only for a time. When the day of our homecoming puts an end to our exile, frees us from the bonds of the world, and restores us to paradise and to a kingdom, we should welcome it.” 
We fear the unknown. Our mind and our logic betray us; we can’t see, smell or feel. We tell ourselves that we didn’t have enough time to prepare. Things are left undone; things are not finished; life has just been too short. We just didn’t prepare for that time that we all face: the end of our life on this earth. From conception to the grave, this is a path that we all share, birth and death. As we move closer to that veil that separates this world from the next, how do we prepare? He guides, directs and prods us to follow him to that safe shore. Jesus says he will never leave us or forsake us even unto the ends of the world.