Death And All Its Friends

Awake
by Michael Heffernan

I lay down in my bed and went to sleep

but only after worrying that the pain

that came up in my chest, seemingly deep

inside it where my heart was, was a plain

signal that I might not survive the night

and could be lying cold beside my wife

when she got up, as she does, with the light,

to start another day in her own life,

while mine was over, unbeknown to us,

including me. As I was worrying

I went to sleep and woke up in four hours

to use the bathroom. Birds had begun to sing.

Two dogs were barking. Nothing perilous

had come to find us. What was ours was ours.

There is just something so painful when a period comes to a close. And it's a repetitive process. Soccer season would come to a close and it wasn't just the hurt of not making it to the state championship, but it was sad knowing that this particular group of girls would never share this field again. Same feeling for high school and college graduations, people moving, breakups, etc. Even though these experiences usually don't end in death, there is still a finality to it. It's amazing how the situation, the context dictates so much of our experience with other people. Those moments are gone and there are plenty of more moments ahead-they're just different moments with a different cast and crew.

One of the vocational hazards of working in an ICU is that you encounter death a lot. And it is only a matter of time before you start to think of your own mortality. How will I die? Will it be painful? Will I get a chance to say goodbye? etc. These thoughts of mortality have even prompted me to draw up a last will and testament at the age of 26. Maybe I'm strange, but I don't find that morbid at all.

Last week I heard a message on death and its relationship with Christianity. We focus so much on life and resurrection in Christianity but I personally had never stopped and thought about the death side of it to this degree. The pastor delivering the message suggested that everything we believe about Christianity, about Christ and about who He was hinged on what we thought about death-more specifically, did Christ really die? Did He really go to a place beyond goodbyes for three days? Because if He didn't really conquer death, then that changes Christianity. And if He didn't die, does that affect your life at all?

This is where the message has stayed with me for the last eight days: if Christ didn't raise up after three days of no pulse, would you feel like you had wasted your life or would you be irritated on the level of when they demoted Pluto from planet to star? To ask the question a different way: have you lived your life so sold out for Christ that if it turned out to be a hoax you would have felt robbed of a life wasted and not just annoyed at the biggest scam of all time? For myself, that was a convicting question.

It is so hard to discuss this topic well and be concise. I am choosing to be concise. And I am also choosing to leave you with Solomon Burke and Dolly Parton's duet "Tomorrow Is Forever". It's what I'm spinning today and it's a nice reminder that forever has yet to come.




Blessings,

KB

P.S. Solomon Burke's project "Nashville" is fantastic.