Can all the years of our lives really be just a dash between birth and death? On our tombstones, that truly is all that there is.

In Sunday’s service on October 18th at Chain Reaction, Pastor Kyle Bonenberger spoke on the second portion of his "Dead Zones" series, a follow up to his message on the dead zones of the heart. This time, Kyle spoke about death, and the truth that death is really inevitable. But more importantly, Kyle spoke about life.  "On our gravestone, all that we see to represent the years of life that we lived is a dash," Kyle stated to his audience. And yet, while all our years are displayed as only a dash on our tombstone, that dash determines our legacy, Kyle explained.

Our pastor says that every season of our life counts to God, and our own personal legacies are measured by the lives we’ve touched during our short time on Earth.  In relation to the "dead zones" that we all have in our hearts, Kyle urged that God is interested in getting into those dead zones. And as we live out the various seasons of our lives, whether they are good or bad, God is there to get us through it all. Kyle says that we need to cultivate the process of trusting God in every season of our lives.

"God is just as much there in the tough times as he is in the good times," Kyle says. And while death is certain, God has placed eternity into our hearts, Kyle explained. Having this eternal perspective - that we are promised a life beyond even death - is the key to letting God into the dead zones of our hearts. Yes, that short, little dash is all there is left on our headstones to physically represent our lives on Earth, along with two very obvious beginning and ending dates. But these are just characters on a stone.

What is real is actually that which cannot be written down, or physically seen. Our legacy is left with the people we loved, and is illustrated in the lives we touched. In our legacy, we live on. And with God, death is just an ending to something physical - a date in time. God has something greater in store for us.

"Live knowing the reward is in heaven," Kyle concluded as the audience looked at the picture of the gravestone on the LCD monitor. "Eternal life starts now."