“Lazarus, listen, we have things to tell you. We killed the sheep you meant to take to market. We couldn’t keep the old dog either. He minded you; the rest of us he barked at. Rebecca, who cried two days, has given her hand to the sandalmaker’s son. Please understand — we didn’t know that Jesus could do this.

“We’re glad you’re back. But give us time to think. Imagine our surprise….We want to say we’re sorry for all of that. And one thing more. We threw away the lyre. But listen, we’ll pay whatever the sheep was worth. The dog, too. And put your room the way it was before.” (”Adjusting to the Light,” by Miller Williams)

I have been praying (almost mechanically after a while): “Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). And God has been answering: a perfect new dog-walking track that thrusts in my my face rows of granite headstones on which beginning and end dates compress full lifetimes to, well, a “mist,” a “vapor” (James 4:14). All these people I jog past are forgotten, every one. If they were anything like me, they wasted entirely too much time worrying about what total strangers thought of them.