hughbiquitous

Randy Pausch has pancreatic cancer. This man, about ten years my senior at age 47, is on his way to death’s door. As I write this, he has perhaps months to live. Seemingly healthy, he has relocated his family from Pittsburgh, where he is a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, to his wife’s hometown of Norfolk, Virginia, so that she and his three children will be in a better situation when he inevitably passes.

Dr. Pausch has gained his moment of fame because of his “Last Lecture,” which is in wide circulation on the Internet (it’s about 90 minutes long; see below). As I thought about his remarkable composure—forbearing any comment on the attendant spiritual exigencies—I found myself pitying him, counting myself blessed to have such good health and to be so much better off.

Then I was reminded of Jonathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God:

It is no security to a natural man, that he is now in health, and that he does not see which way he should now immediately go out of the world by any accident, and that there is no visible danger in any respect in his circumstances. The manifold and continual experience of the world in all ages, shows this is no evidence, that a man is not on the very brink of eternity, and that the next step will not be into another world.

So while I am sobered by the grave situation Randy Pausch finds himself in, it gives me greater pause still to consider that I have no reason whatsoever to think I will outlive him.