My uncle Woody died on Saturday.
As a Christian death brings up some of the hardest truths of my faith...eternal truths. Truths about Heaven and Hell...about justification and sanctification. It is easy to get depressed during times like this...very easy...
I didn't know Woody very well, he lived in Minnesota I lived in Hawaii. I've probably seen him less than ten times in my entire life. Woody was single, overweight and a heavy smoker...this habit is what eventually did him in.
I prayed for Woody a lot as I was growing up, since I didn't know if he was saved or not. Thankfully, his sister Candy and her husband Vic lived close to him and brought him to Church from time to time. When we went up to visit them for the first time back in the spring, uncle Vic said that Woody had acknowledged the doctrines of man's depravity and God's grace while in the waiting room of the hospital. He never did give up smoking...but then again, there's no verses against that either...
Vic said that Woody was in God's hands now... which was the same thing that his dad had said on his deathbed a few months before. Grandpa lived almost a completely Godless life, absorbed with sports, coffeed mugs, T-Shirts, Baseball hats and a whole assortment of other needless trivialities...but I'm sure he would have told you that he was a good person if you asked him. However, the truth is, he lived out his life denying the very purpose for which he was created...to worship God and to find his satisfaction in Him. That is, perhaps, until the last few days of his life. Yes, Grandpa and Woody are now (as always) in God's hands.
And that's just the thing. We are always just one heart beat away from eternity. We are always dependant on God's blessings to make it through the day. We constantly lie to ourselves and deny this dependance, but in the end we have to acknowledge it. As we lay there on that white hospital bed, full of tubes and wires, this great truth becomes so clear: We are in God's hands.
Although this truth becomes frightfully clear at the end, it is just as true now as it is then. As you go to school, brush your teeth, talk to a friend, drive your car...God's providence is undeniable. Why don't we live as if we acknowledge this fact? Is it because we do not realize it? This is the real mystery...
As I look at the pictures on my wall and the memories in my head, it is easy to despair over how temporal everything is. One day, I realize, it will be me in that coffin. One day it will be my brother or my sister...my mother or my father...my friend...we all will be in that same spot some day. How can we live joyfully in light of this truth? How can we rejoice everyday in the creation before us?
Because death isn't the end.
Don't we realize that death was conquered by our savior 2000 years ago? Don't we realize that to live is Christ and to die is gain? Don't we know that to be absent in the body is to be present with the Lord? Do we feel the hope and the excitement as Jesus says to the robber on the cross that "today you will be with me in paradise"? We should not be amazed that these bodies will die...we should be amazed that we exist at all! This is the mystery...that Christ loved us so much that he made us...and that he gave us the right to be his children. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him, will NOT perish but have eternal life! Can we find comfort there? Can we find joy and motivation for these tired souls in this eternal truth?
No...death is not the end...it is only the beginning...
