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Have you ever walked through a cemetery and read gravestones? While most would find such locations spooky at night, cemeteries can actually be quite beautiful during the day, and the gravestones littered throughout them are truly fascinating to read. Unless we opt for cremation, there’s coming a day when each of our bodies will be placed underneath a gravestone since death is the inevitable end we all must face (see Hebrews 9:27). 

When the time comes for our gravestone to be chiseled and dropped into place, there will be many things on it beyond our control. We cannot control the date of our birth, the name we received when we entered this world, nor even the date of our death. Interestingly, there will only be one thing etched across our gravestone we can control, and it’s the little dash between the date of our birth and the date of our death. 

A little dash on a gravestone might seem inconsequential, but it represents the life lived by the departed. The dash is the time we are allotted in between our birth and our death. For some people, that little dash might represent decades of life. For others, that little dash might only embrace a few short years, months, or even days. 

We each have only one dash to live, and nobody knows how long their dash will be. It’s our challenge to make our dash count and live our life well. A life well lived is one devoted to serving God and being right with him. Life is like the dressing room for eternity. 

There’s coming a day when the curtain will be drawn, our time on earth will be no more, and we must step into eternity. What are you doing with your dash? 

Brandon Baggett is preaching minister at Luverne Church of Christ.