蜜芽传媒

Good morning.

On this day in 337, the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great died. Despite having had a famous conversion to Christianity, he never got baptised until his final illness a quarter of a century later. And on his deathbed he鈥檚 said to have taken off his imperial purple robes and put on the white robes of a new convert.

Historians disagree as to why Constantine waited so long before getting baptised. Some conjecture that he may have been too busy, while the more cynical claim that he just didn鈥檛 want to stop killing people just yet. But whatever the reason, it seems that at the end Constantine wanted to be defined by the white robes of a baptismal candidate rather than the purple robes of an emperor.

鈥淒eath comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes鈥�, wrote John Donne. The author of the book of Genesis has God saying to the first humans:

By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.

As an Italian proverb has it, "When the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box. "

God of life and death,
We know that we cannot take our riches, achievements and possessions with us when we die, but sometimes we live as though we can. Neither do we take our failures, our humiliations and our mistakes with us, but sometimes we live as though we will. Help us to live not as those who are afraid of death, but as those who make the most of every opportunity to live lives of joy, celebration and love.

We ask this in the name of Jesus, who came to give us life in all its fulness,
Amen.