For the Lord is your life and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” (Deuteronomy 30: 19 – 20) Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before your life and death, blessings and curses. When Moses was speaking to the children of Israel, he pointed out that if they wanted to live life to the fullest they had the choice of ignoring God or holding fast to him. Our aim is not how much we have accumulated in wealth, but how much love we have given to others and to help others in their dash. The poem points out that we all don’t want to come to the end of that dash with regrets and unhealed relationships.

“Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days let me know how fleeting is my life.” (Psalm 39: 5) We often don’t realise how time can pass so quickly and how we sometimes squander the precious moments given to us in useless pursuits The Psalmists were aware of and knew it was important to value the life given to us. The poem points out that the dash between birth and death is the life lived! How that dash is lived is really who the person is and how that dash is fulfilled is the most important information. Too often when we read the funeral announcement in the media, or we are studying a grave stone, we see the dates when the person was born a dash and then the dates the person died. The title itself is intriguing and I didn’t grasp the significance of it until my friend explained what it meant. Just recently a dear friend attended a funeral of one of her friend’s husband and was very touched by a relative reading the poem “The Dash Poem” – Linda Ellis. “You have made known to me the path of life you will fill me with joy in your presence with eternal pleasures in your right hand”

The dash between the dates poem