Hope and Comfort

Sometimes when someone dies you just know they have gone Home to glory.  Other times though you find yourself floundering somewhere between doubt and dread, fearing that they may not have put their faith in Christ - even faith as small as a mustard seed.

Uncertainty and fear add to the already heavy weight of grief.  And it all serves to remind us that death is wrong.   When Jesus wept for Lazarus it seems it wasn't just for the lost relationship, but weeping over the state of things.  It was never meant to be this way.  Death is a hard place.

I've thought about all of this a great deal over recent years and my thoughts have been tested.  What I have found, in the face of death, is that there are two things that bring me enormous comfort, no matter what the circumstances.

The first thing is this.  We are made in the image of God.  One of the things this means is that we are made to be in relationship with Him.  Every single human being ever.  I see evidence of this most clearly when someone is thrown into crisis, especially sudden crisis.  So often in those moments the person's immediate response is to cry out to God in prayer, even when they've never prayed in their life and they don't really know what they're doing.  Or else they seek out the prayers of someone who prays.  It's like we are all microchipped to God and when the need most hits we are drawn Home to our Father in heaven.  It's the strongest magnetic pull in the universe. 

And as God is "not wanting anyone to perish but for everyone to come to repentence" (2 Peter 3:9) I wonder that God maybe responds in grace and mercy to those cries Home in the greatest of all crises - as one is facing their own death. 

Sometimes we see the evidence of God's mercy in the lives of those around us over many years and we know, in death, that they are going Home.  Sometimes in God's great kindness we might see His grace and mercy in someone's last days or hours - a kindness more for our own benefit and comfort.  And I wonder if there are times when we may not be aware of God, mercifully at work even when all communication between the one dying and the outside world has all but shut down. 

The Bible is clear.  God wants all to turn to Him.  But not everyone will take up this most precious of invitations.  While on this earth we don't get to know ultimately who will take up this invitation and who won't.  But I think there is more hope than we sometimes apprehend because God has made every single one of us to be drawn to Him and has done all that we need through Jesus' work on the cross in order to take hold of His invitation of eternal life with Him - even only with mustard seed sized faith in a final moment.  There is hope, and that is comfort enough.

The other source of comfort then is this.  God's ways are perfect.  All things happen in His perfect, loving and sovereign timing and wisdom.  So when someone dies we can be confident that whatever has happened, it will have happened in God's perfect will and wisdom.  I trust God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength.  (Well, I try to.)  And so I trust Him to get it right in every single instance and circumstance.  Whatever has happened, when someone dies, it will have happened as God willed it to be.  More than anything I might hope for in all my human weakness, I trust God.  And that is the deepest comfort in the world.  I will still be sad.  Death is a hard place.  But I will be comforted by the God of all comfort whose ways are always right. 

When peace like a river attendeth my way,
  When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot Thou hast taught me to say,
  “It is well, it is well with my soul!”

(Horatio Gates Spafford) 

Age wearies and the years condemn, but there is hope

I've done a lot of observing of and being with the elderly in recent times. And what I've noticed is that there's a lot of grief for the one who grows old. 

The grief of watching your friends die - it's no source of glory to be the one who outlives your peers and it's very hard to be oh so frail as to be unable to attend their funerals.  The loss of one's driver's license.  Didn't downsize in time?  The grief of losing the family home and so many possessions as circumstances impose the downsizing upon you.  The move to a nursing home that reduces one's possessions to the barest minimum.  The grief of loss of capacity - mental and physical.  The grief of the transformation from independent, functioning, dignified member of society to one totally dependent, like a small child, except knowing of a full life lived independently.    

It was never meant to be this way.  But even in this world, broken by sin, God shows His love and mercy.  Very recently it occurred to me that God has timed the grief of aging perfectly - by putting it at the end.  I know that's a perfectly ridiculous statement to make.  Stating the obvious somewhat.  But let me explain. 

When I was pregnant for the first time I spent a lot of those months predictably concerned about what lay at the end.  The delivery.  And yet, by the time I was eight and a half months pregnant (and it seemed to be 40⁰ every day) I was ready to deliver that baby.  God's perfect design.  Six, seven and eight months was too short to be ready.  Nine months (and then ten days overdue) and I was ready.   That's the microcosm.

The big picture is the span of my years filled to the brim with the stuff of life. Learning, living, loving. And coping with suffering as well. I don't live in Eden and Jesus has not yet returned. The world is fallen. And so there is suffering.

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.  And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God,  Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
Romans 5:1-5

Suffering and grief help me to grow in faith and hope. I hope that I respond with a little more faith and trust in Him with each new grief. I have a lifetime to practice this. And so it occurred to me that God has placed the end of life, so filled with grief and suffering - and there is no way around it...sickness, aging, dying and death are terrible - so that when the span of my years is drawing to its end and I am faced with grief upon grief, I am ready to face it with grace and hope. I observe that you don't get to be a sweet, wise, godly and prayerful old lady (or gentleman) just by being old. It takes a lifetime of sweetness and growing in wisdom, godliness and prayerfulness to bear the grief of old age with grace.  It's not that it's any easier for the sweet ones.  They have learned to bear it well - with hope.

God is good, gracious, kind and wise.  Putting the end at the end was no accident.

All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be...

Search me, O God, and know my heart,
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead in the way everlasting.
Psalm 139:16, 23, 24

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go

During the course of our lives there are certain days that will claim extra and special preparation.  I remember one Christmas Eve, I think I was about 14 at the time, when I voluntarily cleaned my bedroom and went so far as to collect jasmine from the garden and place it in a vase on my freshly excavated chest of drawers so that I would wake up on Christmas morning in a room that was beautiful in every way.

That's just one Christmas.  Most Christmases get special attention - practical and spiritual.  Easter too.  There were special preparations leading up to our wedding day and also for the days our sons were born - practical preparations so that these days would go well but spiritual preparations too, hoping that what we said and did on these occasions would maybe whisper the gospel into someone's listening, searching ear.

But what about the day of our death?  A bit hard to prepare for in lots of ways.  Death may come suddenly and unexpectedly.  Or it may come at the end of a long, slow illness or at the end of the gradual process of aging, leaving us too debilitated and tired by the time we get there to do much about it.

But what is death?  For the Christian it is the day we fall safely into the arms of Jesus.  That last breath drawn marks the beginning of glorious, eternal life with our Father in heaven. 

I have recently finished reading O Love That Will Not Let Me Go, the fourth book edited by Nancy Guthrie in a series of collected readings on a given subject.  This one is on the subject of death and bears the subtitle Facing Death with Courageous Confidence in God.  And like the others, it's wonderful. 

It isn't easy reading in lots of ways.  The various writers don't make light of the physical reality and pain of death which makes this book very confronting.  Nor do they make light of the sadness and tragedy of death.  Jesus himself wept when his friend Lazarus died - weeping not just for the loss of his friend but also over death itself, that His Father's perfect creation had become so stained and sullied by sin as to be marred by the ugliness of death. 

For the one who dies loving Jesus, death has lost its sting.  Because when the last breath of life is drawn, the Christian passes away from this life into eternal life with Jesus.  And while this book has plenty to say about the pain of death, it has more to say about the wondrous glory of what lies beyond it. 

But back to the issue of preparing for the day of one's death - because this book is not just about dying well.  It's about living well because therein lies the preparation for death. It is best summarised by the second last paragraph of the book, penned by Richard Sibbes:

Therefore, if we desire to end our days in joy and comfort, let us now lay the foundation of a comfortable death.  To die well is not a thing of that light moment as some imagine:  it is no easy matter.  But to die well is a matter of every day.  Let us daily do some good that may help us at the time of our death.  Every day by repentance pull out the sting of some sin, that so when death comes, we may have nothing to do but to die.

(From "God Reserves the Best for the Last" by Richard Sibbes (page 158) in O Love That Will Not Let Me Go edited by Nancy Guthrie.)

As I said, this book is confronting in many ways.  But it is also rich with comfort, encouragement and hope.  As for all the books in this series, it is definitely worth reading.  And reading it would be time well spent.