Mysteries

“Mysteries”

Rev. Stephen Milton

October 4th, 2026

Psalm 19

Last Sunday, after the service here, I attended the wake of a friend of mine. She was 66 when she died. We had met back in our twenties, when she started dating one of my roommates. Eventually life caused us to drift apart, but not due to any animosity or falling out. Marriage, children, that kind of thing. About a year ago, she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. She spent the next twelve months dealing with chemo and other difficult treatments. For a little while, it looked like her acute illness might turn into a chronic one which she could live with. Then, a few months ago, the cancer spread to other parts of her body, and she died. She left behind a loving husband, two adult children and an adorable grandchild. She also left behind a lot of shocked friends who hadn’t expected her to die in her 60s.

At the wake, her husband, daughters, friends and neighbours spoke of her loving nature. She really did have the kind of spirit that brightened any room she walked into. She was an optimistic, loving and caring woman. She was also a nurse. She knew exactly what stage 4 cancer meant. She knew the odds were not in her favour. But she tried to live on, suffering greatly as medicine tried to kill the cancer, without killing her.

The shock we felt at her passing was intense at first. Few of us could escape the feeling that this was grotesquely unfair. She had recently retired, loved to travel, and had a beautiful grandchild to dote on. Her life had ended too soon, too abruptly. She deserved more time. 

That idea, that we deserve more time is worth thinking about when our hearts and minds are not clouded with grief. How do we know that we deserve more time? Where does that expectation come from? Just a few centuries ago, few people made it to 60. Half of all children born died by the time they were 15, often before they reached the age of five. For the vast majority of human history, very few people lived to be old. 

We see evidence of this in the Bible. In Psalm 90 we read:

The days of our life are seventy years,
    or perhaps eighty, if we are strong;
even then their span is only toil and trouble;
    they are soon gone, and we fly away.

For most of human history, the longest anyone could expect to live was seventy, a few might reach eighty. Now, the average lifespan for Canadians is 83 years old. We are living longer and healthier than any society in the history of the human species. We are a miracle come true, the prayer of generations answered. And yet, if we die earlier than our 80s, it seems like something has gone wrong, like the universe and God has cheated us.

How did we get this feeling? Did we sign a contract guaranteeing us 83 years? Who wrote that contract? When did we sign it? That contract, which is more imagined than real, is what political scientists call a social contract. We pay good money through our taxes for a medical system which is supposed to keep us alive and healthy. Statistically, most people in Canada live into their 80s, largely due to medicine and public health measures like clean water, free health care and vaccines. Unconsciously, we have taken this average as a kind of guarantee,  promising us a long life. 

And we have become very interested in extending our lifespans ever further. In the Silicon Valley, there are tech bros who openly fantasize about achieving immortality. 

Immortality headline ( Guardian) 

The founders of Google have invested in a health company that aims to abolish death entirely. Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, backs a company that wants to dramatically reduce the effects of aging. 

Putin and XI immortality
And among world leaders, President Xi of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia have been overheard talking about new research into extending the human lifespan well past 150 years. Rich and powerful people see no reason why they should have to die if science can find a cure.

This view is the logical extension of our concern that people have died too soon. We should decide when we die, not any disease. It is our life, and we should be in control. If death intrudes on our life, ending it prematurely, that is a tragedy which should be fixed.

But the problem with this approach is that it makes it seem like we are the centre of the universe. That we are in charge, and nothing outside of us should hold us back. But the truth is, that’s impossible. We are kept alive by a universe that we barely understand. And we are killed by a universe we barely understand. 

Our life expectancy isn’t just determined by how well we take care of ourselves. It is also matters how well we take care of each other. In Canada, how long you live depends on where you live. A child born today on a First Nations reserve can expect to live 72.5 years, almost ten years less than a non-Indigenous person. Someone born in poverty today can expect to live four years less than someone who grows up wealthy. And children born in poor, racialized neighbourhoods in Toronto have to live with the possibility that their teenager or adult child will die due to violence, never getting a chance to reach 30, much less 80. 

How we take care of each other, whether we have clean water on a reserve, or access to good health care in a poor neighbourhood, or good social services so kids won’t get into gangs - all of those social factors make a huge difference in how long we live. 

And there are other factors to consider which are far bigger than society. 

To give just one example, researchers have found that people are more likely to die of heart attacks when the sun produces a surge of solar flares. The sun sends charged particles towards Earth in an 11 year cycle. Those particles get caught in Earth’s magnetic field. 

Northern lights
When they hit our atmosphere in the north, their interaction with air produces those beautiful patterns we know as the Northern Lights. 

But those charged particles affect the magnetic field and the electrical balance on Earth. Our hearts operate using electricity to produce our heart rate. When there are strong solar storms, and increased amounts of charged particles hit the earth, our hearts react. People with already weak hearts die more frequently during times of solar storms. Can the tech bros change, that, too?

In addition to the universe and society, our lifespan appears to depend on how we feel about life, by what’s going on inside our hearts emotionally. Studies have found that optimists tend to live longer than pessimists. Believing you will get better can help for many non-fatal diseases. Believing that you deserve to go to the doctor regularly matters, too.  Ailments can be caught early before they become deadly. Feeling good about ourselves can keep us out of harmful addictions. Even under normal circumstances, our immune system works better when we are not stressed. There’s a reason students get sick right after exams - the stress of studying weakens their immune system. 

Every day we are alive, we are dependent on a complex web of influences that are cosmic, social and personal. It is an equation too complicated to fully solve for any one human being. When a friend dies, often there’s no suitable answer why it happened to them and not to you or someone else. It’s not that there are no reasons. It is more that there are too many reasons why we live, and why we die. And many of them are beyond our understanding. 

That’s the perspective of today’s psalm. It is a celebration of God’s design of the universe from the highest to the lowest level. It sees human beings living within a cosmos that surrounds us, sustains us, and yet we do no really understand. The psalm tells us that day after day, night after night, the firmament, the stars above us, sing God’s praises. The psalm assumes that the stars are alive, yet we humans cannot understand their language. We don’t hear their words, even though they are around us all the time. Long before anyone understood anything about solar winds or cosmic rays, the psalmist recognized that space is part of our lives. And in the writer’s view, the stars are alive, singing God’s praise for the order of the universe, even when we are oblivious.

The psalm then descends a bit, to the sky above us. Here, the psalm says, the sun is delighted to race across the sky, like an athlete, or a man who is about to see his bride on his wedding day. This same sun shines on everyone, making life possible on Earth, making each of our lives possible. And it shines in joy, glad to be doing its part in God’s creation.

And then the focus shifts to us, down here on Earth. Beneath the sun and stars. They are subject to the laws of nature, which the psalm sees as the laws of God. And, we, too, are given a way to live that can bring delight. The psalm sees the moral codes God gives us as just as important as the laws which govern the stars. We are invited to be honest, to be kind, to respect our parents, to earn our keep without stealing or hurting others. These are blessings. This is better than living violent, immoral lives of  deception, theft and embezzlement. Rather than see these instructions as restrictions, the psalmist recognizes that the wisdom we have received from God is better than gold, and sweeter than honey. To live in respect of each other and to praise God, this is a way of life that will keep us out of trouble. 

But the psalm does not stop there. It goes inside us. It asks for help against our inner faults that we may not even recognize. Thoughts and desires we are not aware of that may bring us to act harshly against one another. Just as we cannot hear the words of the stars, the psalmist suggests that we are deaf to some of our own deepest faults and harmful impulses. We are a mystery to ourselves, just as the stars are a mystery to us. 

It takes humility to understand this about human life. We don’t really know why we stay alive day after day. Why we live and someone else’s life ends. But we can celebrate the life we have been given. We can celebrate the chance we have been given to walk under the sun, asked only to be kind and loving in appreciation. And accept that we are small in a universe that is very, very big, that is more mysterious than known. But if we follow God’s path, no matter how short our lives, we will be a gift to others, and part of a mystery that we cannot even put into words. But it is a blessing. And we can join the stars and the sun in being part of that blessing. Amen.