UNTIMELY DEMISES

Humorous tombstone inscriptions;

“I told you I was sick.”

“I made some good deals. I made some bad ones. I really went in the hole on this one.”

“1902-2000 - An Untimely Demise”.

My Grandmother passed away at 96 years old – and she was ready. She struggled with it but she also willed it with a special sort dignity in the end. The body was shutting down. In her life she’d seen it all – many times over. The redundancy of it all occurred to her. It was a long night and her breathing came hard, strong and deliberate under an oxygen mask that she kept swiping away. When she became unconscious, she would react to the touch of your hand in hers with a squeeze and her grip had an urgency and a will about it. Her countenance transformed by the hour before those of us who sat in vigil. It was hard to watch. When rest came it was a relief but it was “untimely”. I didn’t want her to go but I accepted it. I loved her and enjoyed her and had memories of her as far back as I can remember. And she had become a cadaver. Death is not good. Though she was 96, it was an untimely death. It was grim and macabre. I am thankful for the fond memories I have of my Grandma that keep her alive and ageless in my mind.

 All death is unseemly and untimely. All death is grim. Death is indeed a demise. It is everyone’s demise. It will be my demise. It will also be my liberation and release into eternity with my Lord. I look forward to the day I see my loving Lord, Jesus Christ, face to face, but I still have work to do here.

I have lived long enough to have prayed for the recovery of many a loved one, or another’s loved one. I have been asked again and again to pray for another or even someone I don’t really know. That’s not easy because I don’t believe in superficial prayer and so I pray more generally in those cases. And that is good because those more general prayers are not distorted as much by my emotions. I have witnessed the youthful and the elder struggle with and resist the “demise”. My prayers have been rewarded by a few temporal recoveries. And every one of those recoveries eventually resulted in a later untimely, inevitable, demise. I have learned to check my prayers and to be more deliberate about my supplications and the intercessory thoughts that I lift up lest they be too emotional, or frantically futile or merely empty robotic responses to pleas by desperate people who are losing hope.

The will of the living would be for the ludicrous notion of eternal recovery every time here in this world. This world that goes around and around spinning new life in and old life out. Why do we wish for such a hopeless thing? Perhaps it is because this world is what we know. It is that with which we are familiar. Most prayer in this regard seeks to prevent the spinning out. It’s really an uninformed notion. 

It wasn’t long before the newly emancipated Israelite slaves began to moan about the uncertainty of their freedom and they began to hunger for that with which they were familiar – the certain slavery and death of Egypt. Egypt had been their demise.

The illusion of life in this world and of vibrant, non-aging immortality in it is a tease. We are all a portrait of Dorian Gray. Yes, this life has its moments of beauty and love and fellowship and vibrant animation to be enjoyed and savored. But none of that is something to be clutched at because, at the root of it all – it is all passing away.

There is a lie that there is hope in denying death in this world. But the truth is that we, those we love and the things we adore will all, most assuredly, be spun out. Of that we all have the utmost proof. But spun out to what? That’s the real question. Uncertainty for many – for most. And who has ever come back to tell the tale? Well, if you choose to believe it, the Bible tells of a few … and of One significant One. In time, I begin to realize that in order to live a sane life I must not live with regret in the past nor in fear of the future but firmly here and now - savoring the moment and simply doing the next thing the best I can.

Regarding the “demise”, praying for “our” outcome against the magnitude of what is going on is really pathetically uninformed. There is no power, no truth in it. We all slide down a slippery slope toward that gaping mouth of demise. Or can we avert it?

There is a verse in the Bible that goes like this, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?” Jesus said that. I cannot help reflecting on this with a conclusion that clutching at this life is like reaching to gain the whole world. If the Bible is right, such clutching risks losing one’s soul. Jesus predicated those words with these (Matthew 16:25), "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for MY sake will find it."

With the inevitability of “demise” all about, can anything be salvaged? Can anything be saved?

There is another verse that goes like this, “Do not lay up for yourself treasure on earth where rust and moths corrupt and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up your treasure in heaven where none of that happens.” Perhaps, my treasure is my soul and it can be salvaged. Perhaps my soul and only my soul can be saved. Laying up treasure is not about tithing and extravagant giving and donations. Oh, with a proper heart, all of that will manifest as a matter of course in one's life. Laying up our treasure in heaven is hoping in heaven an trusting God with our treasure - our soul - resting in Him.

Yes, I have learned to check my prayers and to be more deliberate about my supplications and intercessory thoughts when it comes to my encounters with the “demise” that surrounds me and threatens us all. The outcome seems to be out of my hands. It would seem that there is no hope.

The Apostle Paul conveys some very encouraging words to some close friends of his in the city of Thessaloniki about death when he writes, “do not be uninformed about death so you don’t grieve as those who have no hope.” When my Grandmother died I grieved her loss and I miss her. But I do not grieve without hope for her. I believe with hope that she passed with her soul not lost. Now that my Grandmother is gone I need not pray for her and certainly not to her (I offer I Timothy 2:5 for clarity on that). My Grandma’s soul destiny was cast when she passed and she is on with it.

So what it that hope that Paul and his friends are not without? Faith and hope go hand in hand. The Author of the book of Hebrews wrote that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Also in the book of Hebrews (Chapter 6:19-20) you will read, “This hope we have as an anchor to the soul, both sure and steadfast and which enters the Presence behind the veil (beyond death on the other side - the throne room of God?) where the Forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus…”  Jesus is our Forerunner and the hope for our souls after our demise.

According to the Bible (in Romans 10:9) our hope is this, “If you declare with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”. “Heart” belief (true faith?) saves your soul for what is to come after. You may have heard that called eternal life. This saving action is called the “grace” of God. In other words; the favor of God Who gives freely to anyone who humbles him or herself to receive it. Paul amplified on this in another letter to another group of dear friends in a city called Ephesus, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through your faith in that grace alone and not in anything you have done; it is the gift of God, not by anything you can or could ever do – so no one can take credit for what God alone does and can do.”  

What is “eternal life”?  Jesus said this about that in a prayer to His Father (God) as recorded in the Gospel of John, Chapter 17, “Now this is eternal life; that they may know (have intimate relationship with) You (God), the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Simple yet difficult if someone prefers to clutch only at what they see. Simple, yet impossible for someone who believes the lie that this is all that there is, that staying here is better than moving on into eternity with a soul intact.

The lie is also this; “You don’t need to accept any gift. Soul salvation is automatic.”

I believe in no such default. In fact, I believe that the default is death to soul unless God intervenes by grace and that I have faith in that grace.

God did intervene. He sent us Jesus Christ to deal with our demise.

What do you believe? What do you want to believe? What’s your answer to your imminent demise?