Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Thursday July 7, 2011

50 Years Ago In Ketchum, Idaho

"There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it."

When asked, "Why do you want to kill yourself;" he answered:

"What do you think happens to man going on 62 when he realizes that he can never write the books and stories he promised himself? Or do any of the other things promised himself in the good days?"

The above from a man widely experienced in living the full life. On the 2nd day of this month, 50 years ago at age 61 he took his favorite shotgun out of the cabinet and put the barrel into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

I recall hearing the news on the radio. I had been fascinated by his life since much earlier in life.

In 1954 he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. That his life was fascinating is fact, by his own admission it was also a mess.

A gripping Op-Ed about him appeared in the New York Times on July 2nd, last week. It was written by his longtime associate and close friend, A.E. Hotchner. The title caught my attention. "Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds." You can read the entire piece here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/opinion/02hotchner.html?_r=1&src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB

Twenty five years ago on the margin of a now old Bible I entered this quote from Hemingway:

"I often live in a vacuum that is as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead and there is no current to plug into."

Many "Lives of the rich and famous" are lived in the vacuum described by Hemingway, all the glitz and glitter of an old time radio, but they are not plugged into a power source.

I find it strange that many religious people are on the same page as Hemingway and others, they reach a point where in their clouded mind, that although they have everything to live with, they think they have nothing to live for. Their life of "more," becomes empty of meaning and the vacuum sucks away their life.

Jesus Christ addressed this very probability in Mark 8:36:

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Larry Lilly Copyright (c) 2011 Use with credit

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