Christian Living

A BELIEVER'S RESPONSE TO DEATH

by GLENN PEASE
01/08/22
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A young Harvard professor sat in a room once occupied by George Washington. He was exceedingly lonely and dejected. He wondered if that great man ever felt as he did then. He had lost his wife 3 years before, and had not yet been able to escape from the grip of grief. His life seemed to be an empty dream, and though he was also a poet he no longer had any heart for poetry. As he sat there looking out of the window he realized he had to stop nursing his despondency and get up and get going.

Almost as if he was inspired his poetic began to pour forth lines that lifted him, and have since lifted millions. No poem ever became so famous so fast. It was taught in schools, discussed in pulpits, and on platforms all over the world. It was translated into many languages. At one time a poll revealed it to be the favorite poem of this nation, and even now it is heard quite often. I want to share just a portion of Longfellow's poem, The Psalm Of Life.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is not dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow Finds us further than today.
Trust no future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead past bury its dead!
Act, -act in the living present! Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime
And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us then be up and doing, With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.

We want to look back to a great man who left behind footprints in the sands of time. They were footprints that have done just what Longfellow predicted they could. They have caused many a forlorn and shipwrecked brother to take heart again. The way David responded to the death of his loved one has encouraged and helped many to escape the sinking ship of despair, and to stand on the solid rock of hope and victory. All of us will one day face the sorrow of losing a loved one, and many of you have already done so. Since the experience of death is continuous and inevitable, it is important that we be prepared at all times to respond to it with attitudes that are fitting for those who know the conqueror of death, and who is the Lord of life.

The mind and the will must be prepared before hand, and so I trust that our examination of David's attitude toward death will make a conscious impact on each of our lives. And prepare us to be fully Christian in the day of crisis. There are three attitudes that David exhibits, or three footprints he has left in the sand along the shore of the sea of tragedy. They are footprints that each of us will want to follow when we come to that same place. David has been involved in one sin after another that has brought him to an hour of judgment. God has determined that the child born to Bathsheba, as David's wife, but conceived out of wedlock, shall die. The child becomes very sick, and David faces the death of one he love dearly. The first attitude we see him exhibit is-

I. PERSISTENCE.

David had faith that God is able to deliver, and he was determined to fight to the end. He was told point blank that the child would die, but he did not give up in despair. He went to his knees in prayer. He prayed and fasted in the hope that God would spare the child. In verse 22 he says he had hope right to the end. As long as the child was alive the only proper attitude he could have was that of persistent trust and faith that God could prevent the death of the child. David did not pray and fast in fear, but in faith. David's attitude was, where there is life there is hope, and those who know the author of life need never despair as long as there is life.

It is not Christian to give up in the face of any amount of negative evidence. Henry Amiel said, "It is dangerous to abandon one's self to the luxury of grief; it deprives one of the courage, and even the wish for recovery." Whether it be yourself or a loved on approaching the gate of death, you are to face it in faith believing that recovery is possible. In other words, when the Christian dies, or a loved one, it should be, not because he has given up hope, or has ceased to pray. The Christian is to enter death victoriously, and not in defeat. Therefore, our first attitude when we confronted with the possibility of death is to be persistence in faith that goes on trusting God, and never gives up the fight. Martin Tupper wrote,

Never give up! If adversity presses,
Providence wisely has mingled the cup,
And the best counsel, in all your distresses,
Is the stout watchword of Never give up!

Many of you have heard the story of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker whose plane was forced down in the Pacific on a war mission. He and his men drifted in a raft for 8 days without food or water in the scorching tropic sun. They were burned, parched, hungry, and exhausted. They were discouraged to the point of despair, and had given up hope. All, that is, except Eddie. He had faced death before, and now that he faced it again he did so in faith and hope. He was relying upon God to bring them through. He never ceased to pray and believe that they would be rescued.

One of the men had a Bible, and he started an evening and morning prayer meeting and Bible reading. On the 8th day it looked bad. Some were sick from drinking sea water, and some were showing signs of delirium. But Rickenbacker continued to pray and believe, for his attitude was like that of David-where there is life, there is hope. Death was staring them in the face, but it had not yet conquered. After prayer meeting on the 8th day a seagull came out of nowhere and landed on Rickenbacker's head. He gently reached up and caught him. Each man had a bite of food. They ate even the small bones. Then they used the innards for bait, and they caught a mackerel and a speckled sea bass. They were only 6 to 8 inches, but no fisherman has ever been happier with a catch as they were. That night a rain storm supplied them with drinking water.

These answers to prayer so changed their attitudes that though they had to drift for nearly 2 more weeks before being found, they all had developed faith. They were now willing to persist, and not give up. They were almost dead when they were found, but almost does not count in death, and their faith made them victors. When Rickenbacker was asked how they did it, his simple answer was-

"we prayed." David prayed too with death staring him in the face, but his prayer was not granted. The point we are seeking to understand is not that you will never die, or that loved ones never will, if you persist in faith and prayer, but that the attitude of persistence is the only attitude a believer can consistently have. Every believer in God must face the fact of death with faith rather than fear, just as David did. When he discovered that his prayer was to no avail, and the child died anyway, we see his second attitude.

II. ACCEPTANCE.

The servants of David were fearful that when he found out the child was dead he might go hysterical and do himself harm, and possibly even take his own life. This is a common reaction to the loss of one who is greatly loved. The loved one who is left longs to join them in death. David surprised them, however, for he was only fasting and weeping in prayer because he knew there was hope. When he heard the child was dead, and hope was gone for keeping the child with him, he left off from his prayer and fasting. He washing himself, changed his clothes, and went to church. Then he went home to eat a hardy meal.

Ordinarily it was after the death of a person that people mourned and wept, but not for David. When death had come he thought it would be out of place to be fasting and weeping then. He accepted the fact that there is no more that can be done, and one just as well get back into the normal pattern of life. Who can doubt that David's attitude of acceptance is the most reasonable, and most helpful, in going through the crisis of losing a loved one?

William James, the famous psychologist, said, "Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune." It is not fatalism to accept the past. A fatalist would never have had the first attitude of persistence. He would be without hope, and would bow to the inevitable tragedy even before it was a reality. A Christian is never a fatalist. He never gives up hope for the future in any situation when he is trusting God as he ought. But when the event is over, and death has come, it is not fatalism to accept it. It is only common sense. It is irrational to do anything else. You cannot fight what is done, and you cannot prevent the past.

Those who go on in grief, and carry the burden of the past for too long are not being sensible. Like David, we must recognize that what is done is to be accepted, and then get on with the gift of life that God has given and not taken yet. Even a wise pagan can see the folly of excessive grief. Xenophon, the Greek, put it as well as any when he said, "Excess of grief for the deceased is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not." When a loss is certain, and it cannot be regained, why add to the loss by losing more of life than is necessary. David's attitude and actions are to characterize believers.
They must accept the past, and get busy on the future.

Dr. James Gordon Gilkey, pastor of the South Congregational Church in Springfield, Mass., has stated this truth in such a clear way. He wrote, "Misfortune cannot be conquered by furious and continuous resentment. It can be conquered only by quiet acquiescence. We win victory over bereavement only when we face our loss, accept our loss, and then make our way through and beyond our loss. You ask how we make our way through it and beyond it? We do so by deliberately reentering the world of daily activity-the busy world of problems, duties, friendships, opportunities, and satisfactions. And immolated, resentful, self-pitying life is a doomed life. Only the life which deliberately picks up and starts again is victorious."

Alfred Tennyson said, "I must lose myself in action lest I wither in despair." The Word of God, and the best of men's wisdom agree that David's attitude of persistence before death, and acceptance after death are high and worthy attitudes befitting a child of God. A woman who lost her daughter in an accident left the hospital and drove blindly away from the city. Late that night she came to a motel and got a room. She paced the floor in agony of spirit. On the desk was a Gideon Bible. Something compelled her to open it, and she began reading the Psalms. It got late, but she couldn't stop, and so on into the night she read until she came to the last verse which said, "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord."

Later she gave her testimony and said, "That reading of the Psalms did something very wonderful to me. All of life was there; joy and sorrow, happiness and heartbreak. I found my answers deep and satisfying. My heart was comforted. When I started reading I wanted to die; when I finished, I wanted to live. The Scripture is like a massive dose of antibiotic for the wounded heart and mind. The faster we come to acceptance, the sooner we can enter again into a life that would please the one we lost. Norman Vincent Peale went so far as to say, "I really believe myself that when the person left behind grieves excessively it may even trouble and disturb the dear one who has passed into the spiritual life." David becomes our example of swift acceptance. David has one other attitude which he expresses in verse 23, "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me." We have here the attitude of-

III. ASSURANCE.

David accepted the past, but that did not mean he accepted it as final. Death had won the battle, and David accepts the defeat, but he also has the assurance that when the war is over, he will be reunited with his child. Death is not the end says David. His child is only a prisoner of war, and is only taken from him temporarily. William Penn wrote, "The truest end of life is to know that life never ends...death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity."
David recognized that his child just changed his sphere of his existence.

So great is the desire of the human heart to believe in life beyond death that even Robert Ingersall, the famous American agnostic, once stood at the grave of a friend's child and said, "If somewhere else there is another dawn; if somewhere else your child lives again, surely its life will be as good as ours. So be comforted. Take up your daily lives; help each other, and hope that someday you will know and love again the child you loved here."

God has given us visual aids in His creation to help us gain assurance that death does not have the final word. Cecil B. DeMille, the famous motion picture producer, use to like to get off by himself to think out a problem. On one such occasion he went out in a lake in a canoe. He just drifted until he came to rest in a place where the water was only inches deep. Looking down he saw at the bottom was covered with water beetles. As he watched, one of them come to the surface, and slowly crawled up the side of the canoe. When it reached the ridge it died.

DeMille went back to thinking of his problem. Sometime later he looked at the beetle again. In the hot sun the shell had become dry and brittle. As he watched, the shell split open, and from it there slowly emerged a dragonfly, which finally took to the air, and flew away with beautiful colors flashing in the sunlight. It flew over the water several times, but the water beetles below could not comprehend its new existence. They lived in their limited sphere while this winged cousin had gained the freedom of soaring between earth and sky. Later when DeMille shared this experience he concluded with a very penetrating question. "Would the Great Creator of the universe do that for a water beetle, and not for a human being?" He didn't think so, and neither should we.

David did not need to speak with so many ifs. He used none, in fact, but declares in an attitude of perfect assurance that he will be with his child beyond the grave. Death only shifted the object of his faith. Before death he had faith that the child would not die. After death he had faith that he would be with him in eternity. David may not have been conscious of it, but his 3 attitudes in the facing of death of a child have been of great value to millions who have followed in his footsteps in the sands of time. Leigh Hunt said, "Whenever evil befalls us, we ought to ask ourselves, after the first suffering, how can we turn it into good? So shall we take occasion, from one bitter root, to raise perhaps many flowers."

David's misfortune, because of his God honoring response, has resulted in much comfort in getting the flowers of faith to bloom in the hearts of the bereaved. We have a Gospel of salvation in Christ that far surpasses anything David had. God forbid that as believers in the Christ who conquered death, that we fail to exhibit the attitudes of persistence, acceptance, and assurance in the experience of death.