"The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully."
-- Thomas Carlyle
A decent death does not a man maketh. Being a man is not merely a matter of ending well, but of living well before the end of the matter. While it does require courage to end on a high note, it requires a different kind of courage to live on a high note so that whenever it ends, it ends well.
There is a desire inside every man to die decently. We don't want to give our lives for nothing and we don't want our last efforts to be wasted. We want to face the uncertainty of what comes next with the certainty of faith proper to a man who has lived well.
Romans 14:7-9
For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living
In Christ, our lives and our deaths matter because His life and death are what ultimately matters most.
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