“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” That was my introduction to motivational slogans, at the age of 19. It was a revelation: Hey! Whatever bad habits I’ve collected, whatever sins I’d slipped into, there was always a tomorrow. There was always a new start, a new resolution, a new opportunity to rise up from the ashes of defeat. Gotta learn how to fall before you learn to fly, right? Every journey begins with a single step. You never fail until you stop trying! The best way to get something done is to begin. Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.

While I visited my parents over Thanksgiving, they played an audio recording that I had never heard before. The hourlong recording was a collection of some of the most momentous times in their life: their wedding ceremony, my cries as a newborn, my first words, my younger brother’s early mumbling as a baby, and me as a toddler, speaking in sentences, singing, and dancing. 

Our house of four is down to three with the death of my father-in-law on Nov. 18. He was an old man, full of years, and ready to meet the Lord he had served all his life. Death was just a doorway—on our side of it, a bed in a tiny upstairs room with lotions and oral care sponge swabs on the nightstand; on the other side of it, “innumerable angels in festal gathering” and “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (Hebrews 12:22-23) and the face of God:

“As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness” (Psalm 17:15).

I first met Keanakay Scott this past January at a transitional housing shelter in Los Angeles. At the time, she had just scored a two-bedroom apartment in South Central LA through Section 8, a program that subsidizes housing for low-income tenants. She was giddy with excitement: “It’s weird! I haven’t had my own place in ... in ... in forever!” 

I’m a great believer in making lists. This is partly because I have a poor memory, and also because I think it is a good practice of a well-ordered life. My husband doesn’t make lists. Just saying.

On the face of it, no book focused primarily on the subject of dying holds high promise for becoming a bestseller. Death is hardly the most appealing of all possible topics. And unless the author has actually “been there, and done that,” the book-buying public has reason to be skeptical.

If I tell you as well that this book I want you to read was written by a philosophy and ethics professor at a small college, I realize you may already be turning the page.

Because nature reflects both God’s design and human experience, in the cool of the day I leave my desk and go to the garden, for truth.