Saul said to his armor-bearer, “Draw your sword and run me through, or these uncircumcised fellows will come and run me through and abuse me.” But his armor-bearer was terrified and would not do it; so Saul took his own sword and fell on it. 1 Samuel 31:4 (NIV)
I don’t come from a large family. My mom was an only child, and my dad had just one brother. So, I grew up with just one aunt and uncle, and only three first cousins. A week ago today, my dad got a call saying that his brother had taken a turn for the worst. I drove the folks up to northwest Iowa on Saturday so Dad could see his brother. The local hospice took over my uncle’s care earlier this week. It won’t be long.
After returning home on Saturday, Wendy and I attended a dinner for a locally centered missions organization that was rooted in one man’s love for the people of Haiti. It happens that Wendy actually worked for this man for many years, and he had a profound impact on her life in her young adult years. He died just this past year. His son has grown the mission organization his father inspired and at the dinner, he paid his father a wonderful tribute. Wendy shed more than a few tears.
Today’s chapter tells the end of Saul’s tragic story. Falling on his own sword in an act of suicide is an ironic and sad end to a life marked by self-destructive choices and behavior.
Not surprisingly, I have death on my mind this morning.
In yesterday’s post, I mentioned the reality that everything I possess gets left behind when this life journey is over. That’s not the only thing I leave behind, however. My possessions are meaningless in the grand scheme. What isn’t meaningless is the legacy I leave behind with those who my earthly life touched.
What will my legacy be?
In the quiet this morning, that is the question I’m pondering. Along this life journey, have I planted seeds of faith, hope, and love that will continue to bear fruit once I am gone? As I ponder the lives and legacies of Uncle Bud and Denny and Saul, It strikes me that legacy is never about just one day or one life event. Legacy is the culmination of daily motives, words, actions, relationships, and choices across some 30,000 or more days I may, or may not, be granted on this earth.
Some day it will be my life that others will remember, or not.
Every day counts. Tomorrow is never assured.
May I make the most of this day in ways that matter.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
I’m sure that for individuals with names like “John Smith” or “Mary Miller” the idea of another person sharing your name is akin to the reality that another person shares the same zip code. However, when you grow up in America with the name “Tom Vander Well” you feel a certain sense of individuality. It is not a common name. It was easy for me, as a kid, to believe that I was the only one.
Then came the internet.
I first became aware of “the other Tom Vander Well” because we were both posting to the internet on professional blogs. He was a mortgage banker in Michigan. I was a QA and CSAT specialist in Iowa. People started to get us confused. I received emails meant for him, and he for me. The same happened with phone calls and snail mail. We eventually reached out to each other and struck up a dialogue, which led to us meeting for a cup of coffee back in 2011 while Wendy and I were visiting friends in Michigan. While we were sharing that cup o’ Joe a friend of his came into the coffee shop and stopped to chat. It was hilarious when he introduced us. His friend became very confused as Tom and I enjoyed the moment. I’ll enjoy that forever.
My great-grandfather came to America from the Netherlands in the late 1800s and “Americanized” our surname “van der Wel” as “Vander Well.” Tom’s Dutch ancestors settled in Michigan a few decades later and Americanized the same surname as “Vanderwell” without a space between the “Vander” and the “Well.” A genealogist in the Netherlands wrote to me out of the blue years ago and identified our common ancestor back in the 1700s. Tom and I really were distant cousins.
As we casually corresponded with one another, we discovered that we shared a lot in common. We were the same age. We were both followers of Jesus. We both graduated from small, Christian liberal arts colleges. We both shared a passion for our faith and our family in the midst of our vocations.
Several years ago, I learned that Tom was experiencing significant health problems. We had a couple of long phone conversations, and Tom continued to share his heart with me in online messages.
This past week I learned that my cousin and “name doppleganger” ended his earthly journey and crossed over to eternity. I’m ecstatic for him, knowing that he’s been freed from the illness, suffering, and constraints of his earthly body. At the same time, I’m saddened for his family whom he loved so deeply and who will acutely feel the loss of his presence moving forward.
Rest-in-peace Tom Vanderwell. I know, by faith, that you are better right now than you have ever been. I beg Tom’s family to accept my sincere condolences as I can only imagine the grief that they are experiencing. I look forward to connecting with him again in eternity.
For any of my family and friends who hear news of the death of Tom Vanderwell, this may be my only opportunity in this life to share Mark Twain’s sentinment that the “news of my death has been greatly exaggerated.”
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Revelations 21:5 (NIV)
Yesterday among our local gathering of Jesus’ followers I witnessed three teenagers and an adult being baptized. These baptisms were by immersion in which the four publically professing their faith stepped into a small pool of water. They were plunged into the water and brought back up out of it. It is a metaphor. The Greek word baptizo means to “plunge forcefully.”
Buried with Christ in the likeness of His death. Raised with Christ in the likeness of His resurrection. Sin washed away. A new creation. A new start. A new life.
Life and death. Resurrection. Death-to-Life.
It is the meta-theme of the Great Story. Metaphors are layered with meaning, and God layered this theme in creation itself as every year we experience the death of winter and experience resurrection and new life in the spring. It is revealed in Jesus’ story: born in the darkness of exile, dying as darkness covers the land, and raised to new life at the dawn of a new day, the first day of a new week.
God revealed it to His people at the beginning of the story.
This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live… Deuteronomy 30:19 (NIV)
It is revealed spiritually in the life of every one who follow Jesus.
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 2 Cor 5:17 (NASB)
Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. Romans 6:3-5 (NIV)
We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. 1 John 3:14 (NIV)
The end of the Great Story is a new beginning. John’s vision reveals that earth and heaven as we know them “pass away” and a new heaven and new earth are created. I’m always surprised that I rarely hear these final chapters of the Great Story discussed, even among believers, given that it is an epic grand finale that so perfectly captures the grand theme of the Great Story itself.
Today’s chapter describes the vision revealed to John of an eternal city, a New Jerusalem, in which God and His people dwell. The city described is not novel. In fact, it’s an epic culmination of what God revealed from the beginning. The City is square like the camp prescribed through Moses for the Hebrews as they made their way to the promised land. The City is a giant cube, just like the “Most Holy Place” in the tabernacle and temple. The old “Most Holy Place” was an exclusive place for God’s holy presence, and only the High Priest entering once a year. This new “Most Holy Place” is for God and His people to dwell together. No sun or moon, because the Light of God’s glory illuminates the city in perpetuity. No more darkness, or crying, or pain. The old has passed away, the new has come.
In the quiet this morning, I’m thinking of the baptisms I witnessed yesterday. Parents, family, loved ones gathered as witnesses and even participating in the ritual. An individual’s choice to make public profession of his/her personal faith. An outward sign of an internal spiritual reality. Old things have passed away, new life has begun.
It is the meta-theme of the Great Story.
It is where I’m headed, this wayfaring stranger. Today, each day of this earthly sojourn I’m traveling through this world of woe. One day I will cross over to a place where “everything is made new.”
But there’s no sickness, no toil or danger In that great City to which I go.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
Ignorant, Mindful, and Ready (CaD Rev 8) –
Wayfarer
The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand. Revelation 8:4 (NIV)
As a student of history and as a mindful observer of life, I have noted that followers of Jesus in every generation seem to be convinced that we are in the end times. This is not the first time I’ve mentioned it on this chapter-a-day journey. It seems to me that as human beings age and we feel our own sense of dread with the inevitable approach of “the end” of our own earthly journey, it is easy to project this sense of “the end” on the world around us.
As a young man, I read books that predicted the world wouldn’t last beyond my high school years. Since I graduated high school in 1984, many would-be prophets mingled Orwell and Revelation in predicting doomsday. I seem to remember televangelists predicting the date of the rapture and the beginning of the end on more than one occasion. Then came the doomsday scenarios of the end of the 20th century that mingled the apocalypse with the Y2K global computer meltdown (history shows that apocalyptic predictions spring up at the end of centuries like flowers in spring). More recently, we had the end of the Mayan calendar that people associated with the end of all things.
With this in mind, I want to be careful with my thoughts on today’s chapter. I don’t want you to read what I’m not writing.
In today’s chapter, John’s vision from God’s throne room in heaven continues. When the seventh seal on the scroll is broken there is a dramatic pause, thirty minutes of silence before the next round of judgments on the earth begin. The prayers of God’s people rise as incense before God’s throne. Recall the cries of those who’d been martyred in chapter six: “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?”
I always have to remember as I read the Great Story that God layers life with certain themes. Just a few weeks ago in a Message among my local gathering of Jesus followers, I gave the example of how the diagram of an atom looks like a little solar system. The moon revolving around the earth, the planets revolving around the sun, and our solar system in the galaxy continue to expand this layered motif outward into the expanding universe. God is an artist, and he layers themes and motifs in both creation and in the Great Story.
The prayers and cries of the martyrs (those believers through history who were tortured and killed because of their faith) echo God hearing the prayers of God’s people enslaved in Egypt (Ex 3:7). The judgments and plagues in today’s chapter and subsequent chapters echo the plagues on Egypt. God’s deliverance of humanity from the shackles of a fallen world ruled by evil as we read it in the book of Revelation is a macrocosm of the story of God delivering His people from Egypt.
As the angels blow their trumpets of judgment in today’s chapter, plagues fall on the earth. The hail mixed with blood echoes the ninth plague on Egypt. The sea turned to blood echoes the first Egyptian plague. The waters turning bitter in the third trumpet are the reverse of God turning the bitter waters sweet at Marah for the Hebrews. The fourth trumpet echoes the ninth plague on Egypt.
I couldn’t help but notice that the consequences of the trumpet plagues are largely disruptions of nature which will disrupt commerce which in turn will wreak havoc on the global supply chain, which will only fuel economic and international strife, which will only fuel the works of the four riders of the apocalypse that have already been loosed: conquest, war, violence, famine, and death.
Disruption of supply chains, disruptions caused by war, supply shortages, famine, inflation, economic disruption, anger, violence: sound familiar? Yes, I can’t help but see the current events around me and think to myself how quickly things can spiral and descend in an out-of-control chain of events around the globe.
And this is where I don’t want you to read what I’m not writing. I’m not saying we are in the end times. I continue to maintain, as Jesus taught, that no one knows the day and the hour. I’m determined to cling to this ignorance. I can, however, read today’s chapter, look at current events, and appreciate how cataclysmic events like a global pandemic, natural disasters, wars, and famines can quickly destabilize the entire world as is described in the “Trumpet Judgments” in today’s chapter. And while Jesus said that I don’t know the hour and the day, He told multiple parables in which He encouraged His followers to be alert and to always be ready for the end to arrive.
And so, I enter today mindful and endeavoring to be ready, come what may in my own lifetime.
Note: Four recent messages were added to the Messages page today, an archive of YouTube and MP3 fiiles of messages.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. Revelation 7:9 (NIV)
In yesterday’s chapter, the first six seals of a scroll were opened by Jesus. Today’s chapter is an intermission before the seventh seal is opened. John describes two different things revealed to him. In the first, the four winds are held back from the earth by four angels, while a fifth angel places a “seal” on the foreheads of 144,000 “servants of God,” 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel.
The four winds was a metaphor of God’s wrath and judgment on the earth. The prophet Jeremiah used the same metaphor (Jer 49:36). A “seal” was used in ancient times to both protect documents from being opened and to mark who sent them. Metaphorically, this seems to indicate that these 144,000 “sealed” servants of God will be protected during the impending tribulation being held back by the four angels.
In the second part of the vision, John sees a multitude of individuals from every “nation, tribe, people, and language” who were wearing white robes. John is told that they had come “out of the tribulation.” This connects with the martyrs in yesterday’s chapter (Rev 6:9-11) who were given white robes and told to wait for the others who would join them. John is then told that they will serve the Lamb in his temple and be protected, provided for, cared for, and comforted.
There are a couple of things that stand out to me as I ponder these visions in the quiet this morning. The first is the reality that Jesus was very clear with His followers that following Him may very well be an earthly death sentence. The resurrected Christ told Peter that it would be true for him. Tradition says that this was true for 11 of The Twelve disciples (John is believed to be the only one who may have died of old age). It has been true for multitudes of followers throughout history. It’s still true for followers of Jesus today in places like Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan, and China. This is both a sobering thought, and it stands in direct opposition to the “name it and claim it” televangelists or those who believe that following Jesus is the way to safety and prosperity on this earth.
The other things that stands out to me is that this is the second time in John’s vision that he describes people of “every nation, tribe, people, and language.” The greek word used for “temple” in today’s chapter specifically denotes the temple structure where God’s presence dwelt. Throughout the history of the Temple in Jerusalem, only Hebrew men could enter. People of other “nations, tribes, peoples, and languages” (along with females) were not allowed. Also, Paul was very clear that after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection a “Jew” was not someone with Hebrew DNA, but whose heart was surrendered to Christ (Rom 2:28-29). This raises the question as to whether the 144,000 “sealed servants” mentioned in today’s chapter are DNA Jews or Spirit Jews.
One again, I’m left admitting that I know that I don’t know the answers to some of these questions. There are couple of things, however, that I do know. I know that being a follower of Jesus is a path of surrender on this earth, and that very well means that it sometimes leads to suffering. I also know that heaven is a place for people of every nation, tribe, people, and language. Therefore, any thing on this earth that stirs up division, separation, and discrimination against a person or group based on nation, tribe, people, and language is incongruent with Jesus’ teaching.
Therefore, as a follower of Jesus, I enter this day endeavoring to surrender, to serve, and to love indiscriminately.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?” Revelation 6:15-17 (NIV)
Wendy and I find ourselves on that section of life’s road in which we get to watch and walk with my parents and her grandma as they traverse the home stretch of this earthly journey, and experience all that happens to the human body as it ages and begins to wear out. There is nothing novel or new about this progression. Ever since the third chapter of Genesis in which God tells Adam and Eve “from dust you came and to dust you will return,” human beings who live long enough have experienced the natural breakdown of the human body and mind until death finally catches up with us.
On our visits to Wendy’s 95-year-old grandmother, I’ve listened and observed as Wendy listens to grandma, who sometimes laments over her aches, pains, and nagging ailments that limit her quality of life. Wendy, ever the Enneagram Eight “challenger” that God made her, responds: “Your body is ninety-five years old, grandma! What do you expect?!”
In today’s chapter, we find John still in heaven’s throne room and Jesus (a.k.a. the Lamb) begins to open the scroll that was sealed with seven seals. As each seal on the scroll is broken, something awful is revealed to John. Conquest, war, famine, death, injustice, and cataclysmic natural disasters. Come to think of it, it’s a lot like what’s revealed to me when I open my news app each morning. Hold that thought.
A couple of observations. First, the prophetic images John sees here are not new or novel in the Great Story. Centuries before John’s vision, the prophets introduced these visionary images. Zechariah also saw the four horsemen (Zech 1 & 8). The souls under the altar connect directly with the Hebrew altar of sacrifice (Ex 29:12; Lev 4:7). The natural catastrophes mentioned were also referred to by Isaiah, Joel, Haggai, and even mentioned by Peter at Pentecost in Acts 2. So I think it’s important for me to understand that everything in this vision of “end times” has been foreseen all along. It’s all connected and it’s all been foreseen for a long time. Even Jesus described it:
“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.
“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Matthew 24:6-14 (NIV)
Next, I have often stated that human history in the Great Story is very much like one long life cycle. Creation and time are layered with meaning. God’s people have long understood that one day is like a lifetime from birth (sunrise) to death (night). Followers of Jesus have seen that a week is like a metaphorical lifetime of Christ in which every Friday is a memorial of Jesus’ death and every Sunday is a celebration of Jesus’ resurrection that launches us into a “new” week. In the same way, each year has the same pattern. In my chapter-a-day treks through ancient books like Exodus and Joshua, I often made the case that humanity was in the toddler stage of history. Civilization acted like immature, ignorant, and petulant children who are driven by their appetites, emotions, and base instincts. If I follow that metaphor to its logical conclusion, then Revelation is a vision of humanity in the throes of death, the ultimate conclusion of sin’s curse on humanity that was declared in Genesis chapter three.
And this brings me back to Wendy addressing her grandmother’s shock and lamentation over her body’s slow, uncomfortable decline. “What do you expect?!”
In the quiet this morning, I find that an apt question with regard to the bleak description that Jesus, John, and the prophets foreshadow regarding humanity’s final chapters. Broken and sinful humanity living in our civilization and the kingdoms of this world ruled by the “prince of this world” (as Jesus named the evil one) decline into the throes of death.
Pessimistic, I know, and a bit depressing for the one who has no hope.
But, there is hope! And we’ll eventually get there at the end of this chapter-a-day trek through Revelation. Until then, the journey may seem like a long, slow slog of decline towards death. Hang in there. As Bob Dylan sings, “Just remember, that death is not the end.”
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
The woman gave birth to a boy and named him Samson. He grew and the Lord blessed him, and the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him while he was in Mahaneh Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol. Judges 13:24-25 (NIV)
Our daughters happened to grow up as J.K. Rowling was writing and releasing the seven volumes of her epic Harry Potter series. Forgive the pun, but it did seem like a bit of a magical time. The story about Harry and his friends growing up, going through adolescence, and figuring out life was unfolding right along with our daughters’ own adolescent years. For their generation, the story was layered with meaning that perhaps no other generation will experience because it was happening right along with them. I’ve often thought that the entire series should ideally be gifted to a child, one book a year, from ages 11-17. Not that you could keep an inquisitive child from learning everything from movies, friends, and the internet.
Today’s chapter begins the final story of the five major judges raised up by God to deliver the Hebrew tribes from their enemies. The first four were Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, and now Sampson. One of the things that I’ve learned about the ancient Hebrews is that the structure of their writing is typically as important to them as the content of it. Just as God metaphorically layers creation with meaning, the ancient Hebrews layered their writing with structural and mathematical meaning.
Just as with the psalm writers, the center is the core where you place the central theme. The author of Judges places Gideon, who represents the “ideal” Judge, and his son, Abimelek, who represents the antithesis. One step out from the center are two atypical leadership choices from each of Joseph’s tribes. The major Judges are bookended by two “loners” who single-handedly delivered the people from their enemies. They remind me of the achetype of the Lone Stranger I’ve written about before.
But there’s something different about Samson that sets him apart from the others which we see right from the beginning of the story in today’s chapter. Samson’s birth is divinely announced to a barren woman and he is “set apart” by God from the very beginning, much like Moses who escaped Egyptian infanticide. There’s something special about this one, which we will uncover in the coming days.
This brings me back to thinking about our daughters who as preteens began a story about a special baby with a lightning-bolt scar. Stories connect me to themes that are larger than myself. Stories connect me with others and provide source material for Life-giving conversations. Stories help me navigate my own life journey. This Great Story I’ve been trekking through again and again for over forty years is a collection of stories that connect me with God.
When my life journey is over, I will cross into eternity. Here on earth, I will become a story. I will become a story told by children to grandchildren shared with old photographs, snippets of video, and snatches of first-hand memories of moments we shared together once upon a time.
What will that story be, I wonder? What layers of meaning might my story have for the lives of those who hear it?
I guess that’s still somewhat undetermined. The story is still being written. It’s a work in progress.
How can I live a great story today?
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
Joshua told the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.” Joshua 3:5 (NIV)
I will never forget that day. I had no real plan; No idea what I was going to do. As a husband and father of two rug rats under the age of five, this was not ideal. I just knew that I couldn’t remain in my current job. The circumstances had become untenable. So, I gave my notice.
That afternoon I was offered the job that has been my career for almost thirty years.
Driving home from the Village Inn restaurant where I’d been offered the position, I prayed for God’s direction. It wasn’t exactly a sure thing. The work might be inconsistent, as well as the income. It would require some faith that the business would grow along with my position. It felt precarious, and I asked God for guidance.
I remember the moment clearly. I was pulling in the driveway in my blue Volkswagen Fox. It was a gorgeous summer afternoon. It is one of a small handful of experiences in my life journey in which I received a clear and direct answer in my spirit. I can’t really explain it. I heard it clearly:
“Take this job. Stick with it. You will be blessed.”
It was a pivotal moment in my story. One chapter closed. A new chapter began.
Today’s chapter is incredibly significant in terms of the Great Story. It’s a climactic moment for the Hebrew people. One chapter of their story is ending, and a new one is beginning. It’s been about 750 years since God promised Abraham that his descendants would be numerous and inherit the land God showed him. It’s been an entire generation since the miraculous escape from Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea. The Hebrew nation is finally crossing over the Jordan River and entering the Promised Land.
God makes it clear to Joshua that He is doing three things in this event.
God is leading the way. The Ark of the Covenant was a metaphor for God’s power and presence. The fact that the priests carried the Ark into the Jordan first was a living reminder to God’s people that it was God leading them, and it was God on whom they should put their trust.
God is making the impossible possible. The miraculous holding back of the Jordan River’s waters echoes the crossing of the Red Sea and reminds God’s people that God’s power is still very much present as they begin this challenging new stretch of their journey. It also bookends their wilderness wanderings with two matching miracles, reminding them that the chapter of wandering is over and a new chapter is beginning.
God is sealing Joshua’s leadership in the eyes of the people. Moses had some mighty big sandals to fill. The stories of Moses’ exploits and the miraculous things God did through Moses were legendary. As the challenging conquest of Canaan begins, God makes it clear to His people that He can and will pour out His miraculous power through Joshua just as He had done through Moses.
In the quiet this morning, I’m looking back at my own life journey and the various stages of that journey: childhood, becoming a follower of Jesus, high school, college, marriage/fatherhood/pastoral ministry, returning home to Des Moines, career, the years of many moves, the dark years, the return, Pella, divorce, theatre, Wendy, lake, leadership, infertility, house, empty nest… In hindsight, I can see the thread of God’s presence, purposes, and guidance through each stretch. Yep, even “the dark years.”
This, in turn, reminds me that I can trust that same presence, purpose, and guidance on this day, and the road ahead until I reach the journey’s end and the “great crossing over” that ends my earthly wandering and begins a new, eternal chapter.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many… Hebrews 9:27-28a (NIV)
This past week I began listening to an audiobook recommended by a friend, entitled Imagine Heaven by John Burke. The author was a self-avowed skeptic who spent some 30 years gathering and studying stories from all over the world of those who have had a Near Death Experience (NDE); Individuals who were clinically dead, briefly experienced what comes next, and then were sent back.
Here’s the truth: I’m dying. I’m not sure I could begin my week with a more sobering observation, but it is true. According to the scientists who study these things, I reached the pinnacle of my physical development between 25 (muscle strength) and 30 (bone mass). From that point forward, despite the fact that I am probably more fit for my age than I was back then, my body is in slow but steady decline. Fortunately, the mind, psyche, and spirit can still grow and develop through the life journey despite my brain processing power peaking at age 18. Nevertheless, I cannot escape the fact that my body is making a persistent and irreversible descent towards death.
In today’s chapter, the author of Hebrews continues to compare the covenant and sacrificial system that God prescribed for Moses and the Hebrew people to the new covenant established by Jesus through His sacrificial death. At the beginning of the Great Story, Adam and Eve’s sin ushered in the reality of death:
“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Genesis 3:19 (NIV)
From the beginning, humanity has, by and large, fought death, feared death, and sought to escape death. Along my life journey, I’ve observed that most people living a life of relative wealth, freedom, and affluence tend to distract themselves from thinking about it at all. Some are so enamored with the distractions that their indulgence leads to the very thing they were trying to distract themselves from thinking about. Then I’ve observed a few are so dissatisfied, wearied, or wounded that they prefer death to empty distractions.
In the quiet this morning, I find myself thinking about death as a follower of Jesus. Today’s chapter lays out quite plainly that Jesus suffered His horrific death in fulfillment of a once-and-for-all sacrifice that not only made Moses’ old sacrificial system obsolete, it completely transforms my perception of death. Jesus taught that death is the gateway to Life. Death is no longer something I need to fight but something to welcome. It is no longer something to fear, but to celebrate. It is no longer something to escape, but to embrace. The many testimonies of those who experience NDEs concur. One of the common themes of those who were given a taste of heaven is the fact that they didn’t want to come back.
If I truly believe what I say I believe, and death is not something I need to fear or ignore via distraction, how does that inform what I do with my life today? For me, I find that it frees me to live more intentionally with the eternal in mind. My physical descent towards earthly death is ultimately leading toward an ascent to eternal life. My purpose each day on this earthly path of descent is to love God with everything I’ve got while loving others as I love myself as Jesus laid out as the way of trust, lament, humility, justice, compassion, right motive, peacemaking, surrender, and radical love.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
…and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. Hebrews 2:15 (NIV)
Over the weekend, I was informed by a client that one of their team members passed away from Covid. I had just spoken to her a few weeks ago while I was on-site doing some training sessions. In fact, she and I had a very pleasant conversation one morning as we waited for some of her colleagues to arrive for a meeting. The news came as a shock.
The pandemic has been a life-altering event for humanity. We have lived through a historic period of history. Some of the effects may very well reverberate through the rest of our lives or beyond.
For me, one of the fascinating aspects of the pandemic has been to witness fear and its effects on people’s thoughts and behaviors. It is completely natural for people to fear death, yet along my life journey, I’ve come to observe that it’s easy for most people around me to keep thoughts of death successfully at bay. This is especially true living in a developed, affluent society in which life expectancy is long and temporal distractions are virtually endless. Having officiated many funerals along my journey, I came to realize that for many people attending the funeral it might be one of the few times in life they contemplated their own mortality. It’s hard not to when there’s a dead body in the room.
I was struck this morning by the author of the letter to the Hebrews observing that people could be enslaved by their fear of death. I believe it resonated deeply with me simply because I’ve witnessed what that looks like in people during the pandemic.
For followers of Jesus, tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of an annual 40-day remembrance of Jesus’ journey to death that ends in the celebration of His resurrection. That is the defining moment as a follower of Jesus. Death was not a dead end to be feared, but the path to resurrection and eternal Life.
If I truly believe what I say I believe then my perception of, and attitude toward, death is forever altered. Jesus’ resurrection turns the one thing that I most fear, my own death, into an event filled with hope, promise, and expectation. I am no longer shackled by my fear of death. Without those chains, I have perceived my anxiety level to be far lower than many I have observed around me during the past couple of years. The contrast has been brought acutely into focus.
In the quiet this morning, I am grateful for the increasing signs of the pandemic becoming endemic. I am hopeful for life to return to some semblance of pre-pandemic normality. I’m grateful for clients who know that I not only do business with them, but that I care about them, walk with them, grieve with them, and will pray for them in times of death and grief. I’m grateful that through Jesus’ death and resurrection, I am free from slavery to the fear of death.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
Wayfarer 