Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

William Wordsworth, “Intimations of Immortality”

Here in northern New Mexico, we usually sit on the portal overlooking the Jimez mountains to see the sunset. As we watch the slanting rays of the sun, filtered by streams of clouds, glowing across the sky, they paint the clouds with outlines of gold, turning them pink, orange, and red, while shadows bathe the mountains in blue, then purple. The sun slowly sinks into those hills and vanishes, but the afterglow in the sky is often intense for some time, until finally fading into dusk.

Just as the sunrise can be glorious and a metaphor for our birth, so can the glories of a sunset be a metaphor for our death. Surely the souls of the just are in the hands of God (Wisdom 3:1) perhaps like those trailing clouds of glory from God who is our home. As Jesus said, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear. (Matthew 13: 43) The book of Revelation also teaches that our good deeds follow us and become the crowns and white robes we are given and the fine linen that clothes the Church, the Bride of the Lamb.

And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!” (Rev. 14:13)

“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure”—for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. (Rev. 19:6-8)

That is not to imply that our good deeds earn us our salvation, of course; Jesus has accomplished this victory for us by his death and resurrection.  And we lay hold of this victory by God’s grace through our faith in Him. The gracious host of the banquet thus saves us a place. But it is wise to remember that all the goodness, kindness, sacrifice, and devotion of our lives are precious in God’s sight because those good things emerge from the presence of the Spirit at work within us. Paul tells us that our own works are counted as nothing (Phil 3:8), but rather the fruits of the Spirit at work within us – we who are God’s own New Creation –  adorn our souls forever, even as our sins are forgiven forever in Christ’s death and resurrection. What we do in this life, those things born within us by the Spirit, have eternal significance, and what is worthy can be seen as the trails of glory that we leave in this world and in the hearts of those who loved us as we pass into God’s presence and see Him face to face at last.

The Romans said “De mortuis nil nisi bonum decendum est” or “of the dead nothing other than good should be said,” and that remains the tradition at most funerals, when a eulogy, or good words, is given. But for Christians it is something more than good manners or tradition: since we believe that the good done in one’s life by the grace of God is what endures, we speak of it with gratitude when we remember the dead.

Perhaps we do come into this world “trailing clouds of glory from God which is our home,” like a beautiful dawn. Surely we may also think of departing this life like a glowing sunset at the end of day, trailing, through the mercy and merit of Christ our Savior, the glory of all the faith, love, goodness, virtue and good deeds of our lives into the presence of saints and martyrs clothed in their white robes, who lead us into the presence of Our Lord himself.