Encouragement
Dying Time
by Stephen Hand
TCRNews.com
From the book Apocalypse Nights
http://tcrnews2.com/ANBook2005.html
Dear Karen:
I have to admit to feeling a terrible ache in my heart at the news. And yet I am profoundly touched and grateful that you cared to seek me out in person to share it. Your decision not to seek surgery for your lung cancer is a very personal one, and I will not second-guess you. For each of us, there will come a time to keep the "appointment" (Heb 9:27). We will make our own personal decisions then too. And it will be "sooner" for all of us than we think. For what is even another 10 or even 50 years compared to eternity? We are like fireflies pulsing in the night and then vanishing to be seen no more.
You have "pulsed" so beautifully in your life. I have seen the kindnesses you have tried to hide from others. The little smiles, the dollars for a poor man or woman. The sweet word for a child. Your encouragement to those who are hurting, aching, or despairing. Even now you try to encourage me as I ponder how we will miss you. It seems to me---though I know you will chide me for saying it---that your whole life has been a living out of the works of mercy, both corporal and spiritual.
And now sister death knocks on your door. Haven't we waited for her? I, too, have long felt her shadow. One does not have a heart attack after 50 and not think of her. We were born for her coming, weren't we? When we were baptized we were baptized into His death; we were, even then, preparing for our own (Romans 6:3-5) passing, and, through faith in Him, looking through the "dark glass" which St. Paul spoke of, to our own resurrection (1 Cor 13:12) in Him. Each cross He laid on us, each cold or flu was an anticipation and a reminder, each was a share in His cross, a foreshadowing of the goal, the telos, which is union with Him, completion, at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.
Yet you have expressed concerns. Concerns so human. So poignant. You feel complicit in your death. You smoked. And you said there were things you should have done; and things you should not have done. But, Karen, isn't that the human lament of every one of us? Aren't we all in some degree complicit in our illnesses and death? Have we not all eaten the wrong things, or smoked or otherwise disappointed our doctors? Don't even the doctors have things to regret?
The Church tenderly calls it original sin, the propensity to such weakness. But there is a great gulf between weakness and wickedness. Yet I hear you object: "I have been wicked too". You make me ache when you say that. I have known you long enough to know your humanness and for you to know mine. All we like sheep have gone astray, the scripture says. There are wounds which, even now, many years later, still make us bleed and squirm. How painful to remember.
But didn't we return home to the Father's House by His grace? And didn't He rush out to meet us and welcome us back? Didin't the saints even have things to weep over?
You once told me how bad you felt for the poor priests who commited sins, especially long ago, and who are now held up to execration, public ridicule, even within the Church. You said that you had things to regret too, though maybe of a different kind. You made me think that day, Karen. You made me realize more deeply that none of us---not even the Boston Globe reporters and the shark-toothed lawyers---- could stand up to the scrutiny of their whole lives without something to confess. And that the confessional is a profound event, the experience of the redemption of the cross which heals us, even as it judges the truth. It is the place where once again we are reminded that "He knoweth our frame and remembers that we are dust:
11 "For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD's love is with those who fear his and his righteousness with their children's children 18 with those who keep his covenant" ---Ps 103
Sometimes I feel that we Christians should wash out our mouths with soap every time we even say the name "Christian". But that would be a betrayal of His plan for redemption, His love, forgiveness, the fact that he comes after us time and time again. He is the Saviour, dear Karen. His very name "Jesus" means he "saves his people from their sins" (Mt 1:21). And when does he save us to the uttermost? Is it not at the hour of death? When we are filled with perplexities and the Demon says we have not been worthy? If we say we have not sinned we make Him a liar, the apostle of love, John, says (1 Jn 1:10). But to doubt His forgiveness is to forget His life, His love, His Beatitudes, His Cross and His resurrection. Cling to that sweet name---Jesus--- which is above every name, in heaven and earth!
Oh yes, we are all old fools. But we are loved fools, forgiven fools, wiser fools for His grace. We have not climbed the Mountain of Faith through light and darkness in vain: for Jesus, on His very cross, pronounced the final word ----even to those who crucified Him: "Father, forgive them". Everything is Light in Him. Nothing is lost. Even our sins and doubts fashioned us closer to Him by making us pine more and more for Him as we groped through the great contest of existence.
So shoo away the Demon, the Adversary, Karen. He is a liar and the very father of lies. Take the Hand of Jesus and follow the Light of the world to His consummation. Follow that Light through every doubt, pain and struggle as you begin to emerge into Him. Let bad thoughts pass by the window of your soul without attaching yourself to them. Let them flee by. Cleave only to the Light, and see your cancer as nothing but your dissolving into Him, into His fullness. Sickness and death are not rip-offs as the advertisers would suggest. They are our destiny, His call to "come to me all you who are heavy laden and I will give your rest" (Mt 11:28-30).
"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." 1 Cor. 13:12.
So Rest, beautiful Karen. Be born---again---into His wondrous Light. "Face to Face". And remember us when you come into His Kingdom.
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