Death

"Death always comes too early or too late".   Old English Saying

Let's begin with something obvious: if you live very long at all, you will one day experience the pain of losing someone you care about.  It stinks, but there it is.  Death is a part of life.  Or, as death row inmate Robert Alton Harris put it so colorfully, "You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper".

Most of the time (thankfully) we get some advance warning.  Perhaps our loved one is sickly, or is up in years, so we know that what must happen can't be far off.

But we aren't always so "lucky".  Sometimes death intrudes suddenly, without warning or mercy.  Maybe it's a heart attack (my grandfather)....or a car wreck (my friend Jackie)......or a suicide (a sister-in-law).   But whatever it is, it's always raw.  "They just can't be gone!", we protest.  But of course they are, and whatever was left undone or unsaid will remain so.

During my time as pastor of my first church I became friends with a family who lived nearby.  They were decent, down-to-earth people who welcomed and loved my family the whole time we were there.  We drifted apart with time, but through the miracle of the internet we were able to exchange the occasional hello or birthday greeting.

Saturday evening that mother sat down to dinner.  She would never get up.  She was 62 years old.  Joan was healthy, active, and surrounded by extended family.  Not that it mattered: she was dead before the ambulance arrived.

This very morning I stumbled upon this line: "[French philosopher] Pascal....saw the obsession with entertainment as the offspring of the fallen human desire to be distracted from any thought of mortality".  In other words, do you wonder why pro athletes earn more than school teachers?  Why everyone knows Justin Bieber, but not Justin Martyr?  Why there are a gazillion channels on your cable TV?  Because there's no escaping the cold hand of death, and most of us just can't bear to think about that.

But we should.  And in doing so we honor the One who conquered it, and who will one day raise us from it, that we may dwell in the house of the Lord forever.