Countdown to Demise

I don’t think I am excessively morbid, but I often find myself thinking about death and the whole experience of dying.  I was present as three close family members took their last breaths, and I arrived on the scene shortly after two others had left this earth.  I am now the oldest person in my family of origin, so wondering about the timing of my own demise seems quite natural and not particularly depressing.

This morning, as I soaked in my lovely bathtub, I was wondering what I would do differently, if I knew ahead of time when I would die.  The online longevity calculators give me another 25 years, but it’s a bit risky to actually believe those online questionnaires, that tell you crazy things like what percent beautiful you are and whether your IQ is as high as Stephen Hawkings.

So I concluded, if I knew I would die in:

25 minutes—I would get out of the bathtub and put some clothes on.  It would be bad enough for someone to find my dead body, but imagine the trauma, if it were naked and water-logged!

25 hours—I would make some lists of my wishes, things like who should get what and details about the workings of our lives and the household that I know and Bill doesn’t

25 days—I would try to touch base with each of my children and grandchildren one more time to encourage them to give God his rightful place in their lives.  I would do some sorting and throwing out.  I have a few projects in progress that I would attempt to finish.  I would put everything I have written out on my blog and make no further attempts to get it published.

25 months—I would do more sorting and throwing out.  I would get Bill ready to move into something smaller and more convenient for him with less yard work.  I would sort through several boxes of photos and slides and have them digitalized so that the originals weren’t sitting around collecting dust.  I would not start any new projects.  I wouldn’t bother trying to sand down and refinish those old dressers at the cottage.  I would not accept any more tutoring jobs.

25 years—What if I really did have 25 years left?  I wouldn’t change much right now…other than getting out of the tub, but I would begin working on some of the previously mentioned activities.  I would start new projects.  I would continue to write.  I would work at down-sizing, but not in a frenzied way.  I would continue to be amazed at God’s faithfulness and the peace that comes from a relationship with him made possible by the shed blood of Jesus.

25 minutes, hours, days, months or years from now, I look forward to seeing him and knowing, as I am known.

Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.  (I Corinthians 13:12 New Living Translation)

Empty Head...Empty Soul

Empty-headed brains full of white noise,

Spew forth meaningless chatter

About appearance and ego

About events of no consequence

Foolishness.

The reality of life and death,

Brushed aside and ignored

For thoughts of celebrities

For music without substance

Trivial pursuits.

Living a life of denial

Ignoring what matters

Keeping busy going nowhere

Doing nothing of consequence.

Treading water.

Filling the hollow soul

With a bit of wine

With a ridiculous flirtation

By manufacturing conflict

Creating drama.

Is there no hope of insight?

If I shook you, would it precipitate

A clear and rational thought?

How can you not see?

Someone loved you enough to die for you!

Rend the Heavens

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!  As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you!  

Isaiah 64:1-2

For thousands of years, this has been the cry of those who believe in an all-powerful God, as they look at the violence, injustice and evil in the world.  I suspect every generation has had people who thought things could get no worse.  We are no exception.  As we see world rulers who seem out of control, groups who exercise violence against others who disagree with them, and individuals who seem to delight in their own wicked character, we want to scream, “God!  Come down and put an end to this!”

So….why doesn’t He?

I don’t profess to know.  But, if he had swept down from heaven and made everything right a millenia or a century ago, you and I would probably not have been born.  I do not have the mind of God.  I cannot understand how all the events of history fit together with the lives of individuals to accomplish his purposes.  However, I believe he has a plan and a purpose for each of our lives.  We see only the small segment of time in which we are caught.  We may study the past, and guess at the future, but it is only a guess.  We do not see the whole panorama, the whole pattern woven into the fabric of time and eternity.

So, we are left in the middle of what appears to us to be chaos, unable to see the plan, and we cry out…

Oh that you would rip the heavens apart,

Tear them as one rips a curtain open,

Burst through with such awesome power,

That every knee bows.

Roar like a lion.  Blaze like a fire.

Heat the pot of human events to boiling.

Cause praise to your name to come from every mouth.

I keep believing that someday this will actually happen, and the crooked will be made straight. (Isaiah 40:4) He came as a lamb two thousand years ago.  Someday he will come as a lion, and no one will stand before his roar.  No one.

Unpardonable Sin?

I suppose this is a strange thing to think about on a cross-country flight, but I have already done a crossword puzzle, 3 Sudokus, the Mensa quiz in the airline magazine, and have read some articles in said magazine, eaten lunch, and napped.

So…here is what I am pondering.  Is it possible to reject the voice of the Holy Spirit and God’s urging toward repentance and salvation so many times that one becomes incapable of accepting Christ as Savior?

The Bible is full of assurances that God loves us and wants us to come to repentance.  There is a parable which indicates that even coming to him at the last minute after a wasted life gets one into heaven, but could the barrier be within ones self?

My father told me a story, told him by his mother.  I don’t know how accurately it was related, and if I am remembering it exactly as I was told.

My grandmother was raised on a farm in Kitchener, Ontario.  Her mother died when she was a young girl leaving the children to be raised by her husband Valentine Maul, who was apparently an unpleasant man.  Her childhood was difficult, filled with manual labor and harsh punishment.  When Grandma and her sister were in their late teens, they left home and set out by themselves for Buffalo, New York, where they found work as seamstresses in a company that made men’s suits.  My grandmother actually became a tailor.

I don’t know how long after that, they heard that their father was dying, and took a train back to the town in Canada where their father was living.  On arriving, they did not know where he was staying, and went into a local business to see if by chance, he was known in the town. 

“Oh, yes,” was the answer.  “Everyone in town knows where he is.  He has been screaming for days that he is dying and going to hell.  He says he has rejected God so many times that now he can’t accept him.”

My grandmother died when I was thirteen, and this is not the kind of story one would tell a child, so I never heard it firsthand.  I would have liked to know if Grandma and her sister were able to offer any comfort, if they were able to assure him of God’s forgiveness, if he would only repent.  I don’t know the answers to those questions.

No one can know for sure what is in another’s heart.  But, I know people who have heard the message of Christ’s love and forgiveness many, many times and turned a deaf ear.  Does the Holy Spirit ever give up on someone?  Is it possible to so harden ones own heart that there is no inclination toward God, no realization of ones need, no ability to swallow ones pride?  Is that the unpardonable sin?

I pray for the Holy Spirit to keep pestering those I love until they can no longer resist.  I pray that they never get to the point my great-grandfather apparently reached.

Doing What Makes You Happy

Doing what you believe will make you happy is a really bad idea.  You are not able to see into the future.  You do not know if you are making the right career choice, the right choice of a significant other, the right decision regarding a place to live or anything else really.  You have no idea what forces will be set in motion by your decisions.

I hear people say they must do a certain thing because it will make them happy.  How on earth can they know this?  I have been around to witness some of the outcomes of decisions made in this way, and some have brought terrible grief and long-lasting trouble.

I have watched people decide that a certain thing would be to their benefit, and then try to manipulate events to bring about the desired outcome.  They push and pull and struggle and make bad choices, in order to bring about some result, and then find it an empty and sickening victory.

I am not advocating that you, therefore, live a passive life avoiding decisions.  What I am advocating is that you start seeking advice from someone who knows the future.  I am not talking about a crystal-ball gazer or palm reader.

Isaiah 42:8-9 says, I am the Lord, that is my name!  I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols.  See, the former things have taken place and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you.

God is claiming that he is all-knowing.  He sees the future and if he chooses, he can announce it ahead of time.  He does not always, in fact, rarely reveals the future to us.  But he also says, Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:21)

His guidance is available when we humbly stand before him and ask for his help.  This results in much better choices than trying to bring about our own happiness.  We need to trust God and believe in His love for us, so that we are willing to place our lives in His capable hands.  God wants us to experience not just happiness, but genuine joy!

Christ said, If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  John 15:10,11

Listening to God’s voice and making decisions in that context does not bring soul-crushing restrictions.  He is NOT out to destroy your happiness.  His desire is to fill you with a happiness you can’t begin to understand until you experience it.

I know you don’t believe it.  I know you don’t want to leave your chosen path.  But…it won’t make you happy.  I see misery ahead.

And if you think I wrote this for you, I did!

The Inevitable

The inevitable approaches.

It swirls around

Like a fabric

Blowing in the wind.

The gray mist deepens

To inky black

And thickens until

I cannot inhale.

The shroud covers me.

I can not

Disentangle myself

Nor those I love.

But just as I despair,

Someone intervenes

And rips away

The suffocating cloak.

My Savior

Dries my tears

With the sleeve

Of His own garment.

He wads up the rag of death,

Tosses it away.

I see only

The radiance of His face.

On this mountain, he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations, he will swallow up death forever.  The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces...Isaiah 25:7,8

The Lesson of Hardship

I was thinking today about the attitude of entitlement that so many young people have, and how different that is from the attitude of the generation before me.  People who lived through the Depression had a totally different mindset.  As they die out, our society as a whole becomes more self-centered and more demanding of parents and government.

My Uncle Roy was born in 1920 and died almost 6 years ago at the age of 91.  In his later years, he talked about some of the defining times of his life.  One of these was during the Depression, so he was probably about 10 years old.

Uncle Roy had a paper route which was all well and good during the spring, summer and fall, but as winter set in with bitter cold, the daily route become arduous.  He was really still a child, and he decided the situation was unbearable.  One night at the supper table, he announced that he planned to quit his paper route.

His father (my grandfather) replied, “You can’t quit your paper route.”

“Oh, Pa, it is so cold.  Why can’t I quit?”

“Do you see that loaf of bread sitting here on the table?  The money you earn puts that loaf of bread there.  You can’t quit.”

Even though he was a child, he understood that he was helping to feed his family, and they were depending on him.

My father never talked specifically about the Depression years, but he was 5 years older than Uncle Roy, and I know he worked in a grocery story as a teenager.  By the time he was in his late teens, he was training as a butcher.  That did not end up as his career, but he was great at carving the meat at family dinners, and I suspect that skill was not the only lesson learned during the 1930s.

About 20 years before the Depression, my maternal grandmother also experienced the need to help support her family.  Her father was murdered and she had to drop out of school and help support the family by working as a seamstress in a clothing factory.  She had only finished 8^th grade.  I don’t know whether the factory was a “sweat shop,” but I do know she was accepting responsibility far beyond her years. 

Today’s youth are whining if they don’t have their own TV with cable and smart phone with wifi access.  It is not unusual for a teen to drop out of school and sit at home playing video games.  Some finish high school and then don’t go to college or get a job. I was visiting with friends one day, when the father sarcastically remarked that his son didn’t have to work, because he was “independently wealthy.”  What he meant was that his son expected his parents to support him.

I hate to see our society crash because of a depression or other disastrous event, but if young people never experience hardship, our society may crash anyway.  I don’t see how we can continue to survive with so much expected of parents and of the government.  Someone has to pay for this.

Someone has to put the loaf of bread on the table.