I may live for another 5, 15, or 20 years, but I am clearly entering into a pen-ultimate phase of my life. As part of that significant transition into this new phase, I’m going to move into a retirement community that has the levels of care that should provide for me and my wife for the rest of our earthly life. In making that decision, so that my children don’t have to at some time of emergency, it has caused me to look more seriously at the issue of my personal death. I read somewhere a long time ago that the normal human, although s/he recognizes death is a reality, doesn’t consider his or her own personal death. From secular images captured in the movies to an emphasis on resurrection or life after death, we tend to deny the reality of death to our own being.
While I am part of a community of faith that affirms the resurrection as a reality in which we can participate, this phase of my life has raised the question of what I really believe. If I were to state it clearly, it would be that I believe in God who is not defeated by death and I believe that God can and will act in a way that is good in terms of what happens when I die. I have no fear of being in the hands of a good God and I trust God for whatever happens.In one sense, that is the meaning of Jesus’ utterance from the cross, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” I think that most speculation of what that will be like is mostly wasted energy.
Death means that I no longer affect any future that may or may not exist for me. Since I believe that God, not death, has the final word, I trust that that final word will be good. This leaves me to consider what I want to do in these final years of my life. Those are the years that I can still affect by my decisions.
More tomorrow.
