Lessons on death, dying and life in Christ.

My heart is heavy tonight.

For the past two days, I took care of a terminally ill patient at work. A few days before arriving to the Emergency Room-- she had been volunteering at hospitals, driving her little Prius around to have brunch with her girlfriends and would go to the theaters to catch a movie with her grandchildren. In a split second, her life was changed forever. Last week, she was an independent individual-- doing her taxes, gardening her plants, making lunch for herself. This week, her family had to undergo the painstaking task of deciding whether to prolong her life or let her go in peace. I grew a deep love and sense of brokenness for this family in the few days I've spent with them. I held their hand as they finally made the decision to stop aggressive interventions to save her life. I walked them through the process of dying and the priority of comfort, and pain-relief during this time. I heard their stories. I was broken for them. In a million pieces.. broken.

Our lives are so fragile.

Thoughts and experiences of death and dying help us to see things with sober eyes. We are reminded yet again of the brevity of life, the fragility of the human body and the temporality of the physical. Death is inevitable. It is forthcoming for all of us and no one is exempt. With human power, medical research and modern technology, we can only postpone death but never prevent it from happening. Most people find thoughts of death to be morbid and dark and scary. However, I think that remembering that our lives are short and that our days are numbered help us to live our day to day life with greater wisdom. When we see our lives for what they really are, that argument you had with such and such becomes a small ordeal -- the few dollars you got ripped off from property management companies become insignificant -- and the amount of money you have, the grades on your chemistry exam, the size of your house, your reputation -- it all becomes no big thang. Thinking about death is necessary. The most difficult thing about death is that we have absolutely no control over it. There is no telling that we will wake up tomorrow, or that a boulder will not fall on our head in 5 seconds to crush our brains (okay, maybe not a boulder.) No matter how much we fear death, we can't do anything to prevent it. 

In the bible, God teaches us that we are ALL dead in our sins. Even as living, breathing people, the deepest parts of our souls are rotten dead in our sins. As dead people, we had no ability to even know we were dead, to realize the helplessness and depravity of our "dead-ness". We couldn't ask to be saved because we didn't realize we needed to be saved! Yet, God in His mercy provided a way for us to be saved from the death we were blindly enslaved to. Jesus died to pay for the sins we could not pay, and God rose Him back to life to demonstrate his power over sin and death. A victory which is now ours. He not only resuscitated us from our death, but gave us new life -- a life that we could now live abundantly forever. Though death is forthcoming for me, I do not fear death. I know that the power of death has been disarmed by the resurrection of my Savior. Physical death only serves as a shadow of the reality of our condition before we are saved. It reminds me that life without Christ is life without purpose or true, lasting hope. It reminds me that if death is inevitable and forthcoming for everyone, that I need to live with a greater sense of urgency to share this message of eternal life! 

God has given us new life.. let us live it abundantly.

Let's give lots of hugs. Let's love relentlessly and unconditionally. Let's preach the gospel with all our hearts and with every ounce of strength and opportunity God provides so that those around us may find true life and experience the joy and hope of knowing Christ as their Savior too.

Woe unto me if I do not preach the gospel..

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 2:1-7

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

         But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:55-57