Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Another person in our church is dying.  Another family will be without a mother, a husband will lose his soul mate.  The sadness is overwhelming at times.  I prayed for healing and it did not come.  The family prayed for healing and yet there she lies, dying.

In thinking this over, I realized a couple of things.  My sadness is true and real, but the core issue is the loss here of this person; the loss to her family to her friends and to her church.  My sadness is appropriate, but not the center.  When in this sorrow, the focus must be, as in all things, heavenward.  If my sorrow becomes the focus, then any hope of ministry to the family and friends becomes self serving. Sorrow that finds comfort from Heaven can then give the same comfort. For each of us then weeping and sorrow are good when death is the issue, for they express the feelings and give place to the insult that death is to us all.  They must move heavenward though, in order to find peace.  

Which leads to my second realization; we are all acting as though death is a new thing, as though we are the first to experience it and we really should not have to die. 

Listen to any local news program and notice how death is generally one of the lead stories.  Death always makes the news.  Why is that?  Death has been a part of earthly existence since nearly the beginning of time.  Death is not a surprise.  Everyone we know that is no longer on this earth has died.  None of us have any relatives from, say 1700, who are living.  No, all of them have died.   But still, death always takes us by surprise.

Maybe we resist death and fight it because it truly is foreign to us. Maybe we are surprised by it because we were never meant to die, but to live.  We are surprised when death finds us. 

“Because I could not stop for death-

  he kindly stopped for me-“         Emily Dickinson

How then to live as those who must die, but are ultimately meant to live?  A question worth pondering…..