hughbiquitous

It’s getting so it seems like everywhere I turn, someone is dying prematurely - or so it seems.

In July, a coworker lost his son unexpectedly.

David posted some reflections (here, here) that brought death to the fore.

One of those posts led me here - the account of a local gal struck down by breast cancer.

This just came to my attention too: a young man named Rick Pearson started feeling sick in June. On Friday, leukemia claimed his life at the young age of 23.

On Saturday, a fellow at church got word that his father had suffered a massive heart attack and died.

This morning, I caught up with Tim Challies’ blog describing the mix of emotions that accompanies watching someone die.

Yesterday was the fourth September 11. And of course, there is Hurricane Katrina, and that reminds us of the tsunami last Christmas…

Going farther back, when we started attending our church a year and a half ago, we met one family that endured the pain of a stillborn child and another family that just suffered the loss of its husband and father - leaving a thirtysomething widow with five fatherless children, none of whom were yet in their teens.

Watching Band of Brothers recently, I was struck by the way death was no less horrible in war, but it was utterly expected. Maybe that’s the problem… we forget to expect death.

Louie Giglio once taught at North Point Community Church about something in the news (at the time) called a “quarter-life crisis” that young people were going through at the age of 21 or so. He identified the big lie in that assessment: the assumption that “you get 80.” For Rick Pearson, his “quarter-life crisis” would have happened when he was about six - roughly my oldest daughter’s age.

Yesterday, Dan taught on the question of “Are You Safe?,” introducing a series on being sure you’re a Christian. It seems like a good question to be asking right about now…

This place is no home worth living for.

And yet, death is horrible - while my hope is fully and exclusively invested in the resurrection of Christ, I still find a certain Pollyanna-like flavor to all the “now he’s with Jesus” sentiment you often hear when a follower of Christ dies. After all, death is the wages of sin, right? It is a form of punishment, right? That means it’s not a Good Thing™, right?

Death is certain.

We have no hope this side of death.

So I embrace life with a loose grip, recognizing it as a gift from God with joys in the here-and-now, only to end painfully, sadly, and terribly - but hoping above all for a new life, free from horror and futility, in the incorruptible and unending Kingdom of God.