Life framed by death
Life is framed by death. The true value of life can only become visible in contrast to death. Therefore seeing death is crucial to value life.
The starkest frame to life is its biological end by death. That's the borderline ending everything that now seem alive and true. Death and life are equally real, and the line that separates us from the dead is absolute. Perhaps because of its absolute nature and cruelty by which death removes our dearest from us, we relate to it with fear and avoidance. Acknowledging its ever-so-near presence, we attempt to remove it from our awareness and live like death would not exist. By this we create a lie that originates in fear and leads us afar from living on the value of life. Fear of death causes us to lose life. Realizing death in the lives of our dearest ones brings up a need to be close to them, to love and to be loved, - and suddenly we are face to face with true value of life. Unfortunately the moment was sparked by fear which then overshadows its beauty. For a short moment, however, we love desperately, knowing that in another moment we go back to living as if death didn't exist, consuming the life in everything else than enjoying it's most valuable content.
Death is present in our lives in other ways, too. It becomes visible in all limitedness such as the mentioned inability to really live. We were created to live loving, to connect with people in love - to love and to be loved. That's life; whereas, everything falling short from it is death - and death is what we do, all the time. Lying to ourselves about necessities and obligations - which we undeniable have, but a lot less than we often admit. Therefore, we are unable to truly live, and this inability is part of death framing our life.
Seeing death is painful, but as we come clean as insufficient, unable, and incompetent, our only hope is in grace that grants us right to keep on possessing the gift of life. Whereas, love is life at healthiest, grace is life in genuine as sick people as we are. Grace holds all the powers by which we can receive love, and by living in grace we can share love around us. Realizing death through our own inabilities leads us to the most genuine state of life: Grace, from which focusing to the true valuables of life is a lot easier.
The giver of life promises our life to continue after the biological death, but seeing death and realizing it powers gives live before death the value it deserves. This is how death serves as frames leading our eyes to the beautiful artwork the creator trusted in our hands.
