Dear Trekker,
We are into the New Year sufficiently that some resolutions have already bit the dust, perhaps. So I want to dispense with the minutiae of a new year and dive headlong into some deep waters of life. In recent days, two words have been on my heart and mind constantly… death and hope. Maybe these seemingly incongruous words are more tied together than we think at first glance.
Death is always at our doorstep, but for some reason we refuse to think about it, realize the value of it, or prepare for it. Hope, specifically the hope of Scripture, is a member of that eternal trilogy which defines the essence of life and all that God is – love, hope, and faith. The Apostle Paul sets it in perspective: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three (eternal truths) remain: faith, hope and love.”
So, although we always will await “the rest of the story”, a clearer understanding of death and hope might prepare us, broad stroke wise, to live the abundant life in 2008 and throughout our lives. Indeed I “hope” so!
Let’s begin with death! (Sounds odd to phrase it that way.) Life as we know it today actually began with the death of a relationship between God and Man. Ever since the Garden “fall”, God has been seeking to restore the relationship and nullifying the effect of, “dust you are and to dust you shall return”. Ezekiel amplifies the overarching principle when he states: “the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Physical death became as real to life as its counterpart, birth. Spiritual death was a resultant part, but the Hound of Heaven in eternal ages past altered the outcome. Death could be (and is) the essential doorway to eternal life, life without end – hope fulfilled!
Death of a loved one brings it home quite readily. Two deaths have touched us deeply in recent days. One of my sweet Barbara’s dearest life-long friends went home to be with the Lord a few days before Christmas, and my sister’s husband departed this life very suddenly a few days after Christmas. Our dear friend, Lois, ever radiant, ever up-beat, lost the earthly four-year battle with cancer, slowly and painfully. My brother-in-law passed through death into life in an instant, in his sleep. Yet hope, exuding from God’s essence, was on their lips and in their hearts. Lois “sent” this poem to her memorial service, “My First Christmas in Heaven”! Here is one stanza. “I see the countless Christmas trees, around the world below, with tiny lights, like heaven’s stars, reflecting on the snow. The sight is so spectacular, please wipe away that tear. For I am spending Christmas with Jesus Christ this year.” (Email me and I will send you the poem.)
Death is an essential fact of life. We are dying and living constantly! Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the physical realm. A doctor friend tells me that each second ten million of my red blood cells die! All my body cells are completely replaced in a matter of weeks. Scientists just aren’t completely sure how long it takes. Life is not perpetual without death. Death is the doorway to new life. (Death on a cross for all mankind takes on new meaning, does it not?) And if I ever actually write that book on leadership I keep writing in my mind, it will be entitled, “Follow, Lead, and Get Out of the Way”. The old must die for the new to emerge. Yes, at 73, my time is around the corner. Daily I am nearer the finish line.
As a cancer survivor, oddly enough (or not so oddly at all), I have learned that when disregulation of the cell cycle components occurs, this may lead to tumors/cancers. Such cells may multiply uncontrollably, instead of dying, and lead to destruction of good cells, and eventually, over time, may snuff out life. The understanding of how cancer works is such a metaphor on life. The good can get “out of bounds” and destroy other “good”. For example, is not sin always self-interest carried to the extreme?
Death is both fearful and mysterious, but death allows hope to blossom. Spiritually speaking, why does the Apostle Paul remonstrate that “He (I) dies daily” if it is not key to life and hope? The Lord ties the physical and spiritual together when he declares, “unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.” He follows with the spiritual point: “the man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world (and “dies daily”) will keep it for eternal life.” The beloved Emily Dickinson has some beautiful verse here – “Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just ourselves… and immortality.”
Enter hope! Hope is the oxygen of spirit life. Hope restores the human spirit as oxygen gives life and proper longevity to physical body cells. Hope is really a choice for man. He can “see what God is up to with this “death routine” in all of life, i.e. the necessity of death for resurrection, or he can ignore or reject it at his (or her) own peril. Yes, hope can never be completed fully in this life. It is not intended by Divine plan. Hope is only fully realized through death and promotion to eternal glory! That is heaven! Sure, this is big time mystery, as Paul writes to Christians in Colossae. Time does not change this mystery! The resurrected Christ in us will always be our hope of glory! (Check out one of my favorite descriptive verses, Rom 8:11.)
We are saved by faith and hope sets in. And the highest form of hope is overcoming the depression of death. We can do this in Christ. Paul again: “O death, where is your victory, your sting?” Yes, yes, death has been/is swallowed up in victory!
Now trekker, what does this mean for us in another year? Some of us won’t be around come December 31. Perhaps we will have passed from death to life eternal. Some of you may “get it” and learn what the Lifegiver is up to and turn your life over to Him, and pass from death into life spiritually. Therefore, whether you live or die physically, it is “unto the Lord”. So it doesn’t really matter when we die physically, but how we die! Do we die believing in His grace which redeems, or do we die as those “without hope”, as Paul says?
We are climbing that mountain of life, dear friend. Near the summit the oxygen of life (read “hope”) is an absolute essential to continue the climb. The further we go in life, the rarer the oxygen of hope. Receive that hope today, trekker, if you aren’t sure what awaits you at the top (end) of the mountain. You’ll forever be glad you did!
Your fellow trekker, breathing deeply the oxygen of hope,
Jim Meredith
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