Not to be maudlin, but at the edge of eighty-five it seems that I find myself considering the aspect of death more often than I did at, say, forty. There are jokes: “I want to die in my sleep like my father, not yelling and screaming like the other people in the car!” There is a country song with lyrics which state that “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to go now!” And that one is me, I guess.
It’s not that I’m afraid of dying; what is there to fear, with all the fantastic promises that our Jesus gives us! It’s just that I love, love, love my family and my friends, and, difficult as life can sometimes be, I’m used to it! I like being alive!
A few weeks ago I spent a week in the hospital. I wasn’t really sick sick; I had a touch of pneumonia, but the real thing was that somewhere in my lungs something started to bleed just a tiny bit, and they deemed it advisable to find out where and why. Consensus was that somewhere down there tissue that I had damaged by smoking for 20 years 40 years ago had sprung a leak.
Even with all the tests they never did find out exactly where this was happening, not that it matters very much. But you can see that this episode might have prompted me to wonder just how I might die, when I do. Maybe sort of like drowning? Peaceful.
But if I could choose, I’d pick my Mom. I remembered my mother, the night she died. She was 102, in her own home, lying on her own bed, and as her breaths came more and more slowly she had this sweet smile on her face, and she was saying, “Oh my! ….. Oh my! …… Oh my! …” How I would love to know what glorious things she was seeing in those her last moments of life on this earth.
I know that I will be ushered into the presence of the Jesus I love, that He has a home for me there, and that I will be with Him forever! I will have the mind of Christ! What does that mean?! I will again see my Nana and everyone who went ahead of me, even the Old Testament prophets and everyone I’ve read about in the Word! And there will be no evil, not anywhere! I can’t even imagine it, not with this mind! And Time; how will it be different? God created time for us here on earth! And our new bodies! No canes, no oxygen tanks to lug around! And how about His thousand year reign on earth? And the Rapture! So many questions, finally answered! I can’t wait!
Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute! Yes I can wait! I can wait in peace, because I trust so absolutely in the truth that GOD IS IN CHARGE!! Yes, He is! And we are so very, very blessed to have this God who sent His only Son to die to save us!
PRAISE GOD!
