On Death, Faith, and the Delete Button

I was updating our database this evening, preparing to mail another newsletter. In addition to some email addresses that needed correcting, there were four names I had to delete because those people had passed away since our last mailing.

It was one of those pause-and-make-you-think moments. It felt so disrespectful to hit the delete button, erasing those names forever. I wanted to keep the names there, as if they were a memorial of some sort to all that those people represented and had acccomplished. But of course, there's no sense in mailing letters to people who will never get them. [Delete.] I felt awful.

Then my mind wandered to the story of Abraham, where God promises that his descendants will be more numerous than the stars in the sky. Abraham had no children at that point, and it was fourteen years later that Isaac was born. I wonder if I would have enough faith to hang on to a promise of God that took fourteen years to fulfill? I also wonder if I would think someone else crazy for doing the very same thing. "Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed..." -Romans 4:18

Some of the people I deleted from my database possessed such a faith. "All these people were still living by faith when they died... [and] the world was not worthy of them." Hebrews 11:13, 38. I am so grateful for their examples. Can you imagine not having someone to look up to? It makes me want to live in such a way that when I die, other people pause and think before deleting me from their database.