Deadline

Yesterday, April 15, was Tax Deadline Day. Last-minute filers raced to the Post Office to assure a postmarked-by-midnight stamp. Today is another governmental deadline, the date by which the 2010 Census forms are to be returned. Of course many people will not respond, so there are plans to send census workers door-to-door.

Deadlines are part of life. In the workplace or school. As part of our responsibility as citizens. Without deadlines, some of us might never get anything done! A few years ago, though, I came across what may be part of the etymology of the word 'deadline.' It was in an account of the horrible Andersonville prisoner of war camp during the Civil War. There was a stockade surrounding the camp. Stationed atop the barricade were armed soldiers, sharpshooters charged with preventing escape. A line was drawn in the dirt several yards within the fence. To step across that "line in the sand," or even to wave one's hand across it, meant death. It was the deadline.

There's an ominous reality to the concept of deadline. Its implication is that failure to comply will result in jeopardizing one's job, one's grade, one's freedom, even one's life. It's always a relief to complete the project or the assignment or the tax return before the deadline. When asked by TV news how he felt about being one of the last to mail his tax return, a man in our town laughed and said, "I'm happy to get it done!"

We have no official deadline in terms of our spiritual life. And yet...