A friend came to our door early this morning, before we’d even gotten up for
church, and we found that her 3-year-old son had fallen off a roof. He has a traumatic brain injury, and possibly
other injuries as well. They took him to
the doctor who prescribed something so that he’d stop throwing up his food, but
they haven’t been able to do the CT scan yet or the MRI. I don’t know that he’s going to make it.
At church, our pastor tries to make an announcement, and then tears come. He has something wrong with his spleen, and the doctors believe it may be cancer. A biopsy has been taken and the results will be available next week.
That juxtaposition this morning, this impoverished no-name three-year old boy and this well-off, well-known middle-aged pastor, both facing death.
It makes me think of the mother down the alleyway who died of a fever a few months ago, leaving behind three little kids, and the foreigners serving in Cambodia who died in a car crash a few years ago, leaving behind two little kids.
It makes me think of the boy across the alley who died of tuberculosis at the age of 18, and the niece of my ex-pat friend who died of suicide at the age of 18.
It makes me think of the father of my close friend in the slum, who died with us after a long battle with drug addiction, and the best friend of my close friend in the city, who died fighting in Afghanistan.
And many others.
It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from. We will die. Everyone we know will die.
And yet I can’t get over my sadness at death. I can’t get over the loss. I can’t get used to the children left behind, the parents left behind, the siblings left behind.
I don’t have to get used to it.
Jesus wept.
We aren’t asked to stop being sad about death. What we are asked to do is live.
Tomorrow might be the last day you have before you die. You don’t know. But what you do know, for certain, is that tomorrow will be one day that you only have tomorrow, a day that you will never get back, a day to LIVE before you die. Use it! Live it!
Because the truth is, cancer and tuberculosis and dengue and car accidents and fevers are not what make this world a difficult place. Take away every early death, and there is still suffering. Take away every physical illness, and there is still anxiety, greed, anger, fear, depression, distrust, selfishness, hatred, callousness, and so on. Take away poverty, take away lack, take away hunger, give a people the most advanced medical systems in the world, arrange their entire childhood around safety, will they really live any better than anyone else?
The removal of poverty and lack and hunger does not in itself bring life. The safest childhood in the world and the most advanced medical systems in the world do not bring life. Those things can only put off death. And none of those things can put off death forever.
A child spends more time at school learning skills to help him make his own money in the future than learning how to bring joy to others right now. Young people appear far more focused on trying to get the right certificates than on trying to do the right thing. Working adults in our country appear to structure their priorities so that they are far more focused on saving for the future than on giving in the here and now. And to what end are all these certificates and aspirations and future plans? We have a president who has EVERYTHING we are told to seek after, he IS the American Dream. Money. Power. Marriages to beautiful women. Fame. Long life. So what has all that done to him? Is his average day, his typical interaction, full of joy and contentment or bitterness and anger? Listen to him speak (or tweet) without a script. Do you hear love or hate? Hope or fear?
What could is putting off death long enough to gain all the things of the world if you’ve never learned how to live in the meantime?
Being faced with death so regularly here is difficult, but it is a clear reminder: I am going to die, and I don’t know when. We are all going to die. We have to come to terms with that. The question is not whether we will succeed in putting off death, but whether we will find life and live life before we die. And all the things this world is telling us to do to put off death, all these things the world is convincing us that we have to gain before you die, not ONE of those things is going to make us alive.
Find the living. Be the living. Stop chasing the things of death and the false promise of extension of life before it’s too late.
Leave the dead to bury their own dead.
At church, our pastor tries to make an announcement, and then tears come. He has something wrong with his spleen, and the doctors believe it may be cancer. A biopsy has been taken and the results will be available next week.
That juxtaposition this morning, this impoverished no-name three-year old boy and this well-off, well-known middle-aged pastor, both facing death.
It makes me think of the mother down the alleyway who died of a fever a few months ago, leaving behind three little kids, and the foreigners serving in Cambodia who died in a car crash a few years ago, leaving behind two little kids.
It makes me think of the boy across the alley who died of tuberculosis at the age of 18, and the niece of my ex-pat friend who died of suicide at the age of 18.
It makes me think of the father of my close friend in the slum, who died with us after a long battle with drug addiction, and the best friend of my close friend in the city, who died fighting in Afghanistan.
And many others.
It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from. We will die. Everyone we know will die.
And yet I can’t get over my sadness at death. I can’t get over the loss. I can’t get used to the children left behind, the parents left behind, the siblings left behind.
I don’t have to get used to it.
Jesus wept.
We aren’t asked to stop being sad about death. What we are asked to do is live.
Tomorrow might be the last day you have before you die. You don’t know. But what you do know, for certain, is that tomorrow will be one day that you only have tomorrow, a day that you will never get back, a day to LIVE before you die. Use it! Live it!
Because the truth is, cancer and tuberculosis and dengue and car accidents and fevers are not what make this world a difficult place. Take away every early death, and there is still suffering. Take away every physical illness, and there is still anxiety, greed, anger, fear, depression, distrust, selfishness, hatred, callousness, and so on. Take away poverty, take away lack, take away hunger, give a people the most advanced medical systems in the world, arrange their entire childhood around safety, will they really live any better than anyone else?
The removal of poverty and lack and hunger does not in itself bring life. The safest childhood in the world and the most advanced medical systems in the world do not bring life. Those things can only put off death. And none of those things can put off death forever.
A child spends more time at school learning skills to help him make his own money in the future than learning how to bring joy to others right now. Young people appear far more focused on trying to get the right certificates than on trying to do the right thing. Working adults in our country appear to structure their priorities so that they are far more focused on saving for the future than on giving in the here and now. And to what end are all these certificates and aspirations and future plans? We have a president who has EVERYTHING we are told to seek after, he IS the American Dream. Money. Power. Marriages to beautiful women. Fame. Long life. So what has all that done to him? Is his average day, his typical interaction, full of joy and contentment or bitterness and anger? Listen to him speak (or tweet) without a script. Do you hear love or hate? Hope or fear?
What could is putting off death long enough to gain all the things of the world if you’ve never learned how to live in the meantime?
Being faced with death so regularly here is difficult, but it is a clear reminder: I am going to die, and I don’t know when. We are all going to die. We have to come to terms with that. The question is not whether we will succeed in putting off death, but whether we will find life and live life before we die. And all the things this world is telling us to do to put off death, all these things the world is convincing us that we have to gain before you die, not ONE of those things is going to make us alive.
Find the living. Be the living. Stop chasing the things of death and the false promise of extension of life before it’s too late.
Leave the dead to bury their own dead.
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