Good Thursday Morning!!! I bet you will glean meaning and potentially change here!
1. Question – “What are we going to do about death?”
2. Thought – From: Faith & Values columnist Nelson Ould.
Losing my young wife to cancer was hard. Actually, it was the saddest — and gladdest — time of my life. There is a profound way in which death and life sometimes get pressed together. Let me try to explain.
When I first met Lacy, I knew my long search for a wife finally was over. She was the love of my life, and when we got engaged, I was over the moon. However, five weeks later, she was diagnosed with cancer — a terrible cancer.
Lacy had cancer of the mouth, which eventually spread to her spinal column, brain and face. She soon lost her ability to speak and eat through her mouth. Surgeries were painful and deforming — a slow massacre, really — and none of them worked. She was in and out of hospitals relentlessly. After 18 months of engagement, we were married in the living room of my home, and 71 days later, Lacy was dead. She was 31.
Lacy’s death hit me hard. I grieved deeply. However, I also began to live differently. Oddly, her death felt like a call to life, and in the midst of my grief, I began to see differently. The air was clearer than ever before, and my life began to feel more meaningful and true.
What I mean is that temporal things became less important and lasting things became more important. Watching hours of sports on TV instantly lost its appeal. The responsibilities and privileges of Earth seemed less important, and I grew indifferent to money. At the same time, my curiosity about death and the afterlife increased.
Accompanying my young bride up to and over into death helped me see death’s true colors, especially death’s power, its brute force. Most of all, the journey with Lacy convinced me that the most pressing question about life is, “What are we going to do about death?”
This brings me to Easter. Christians place their hopes on Easter because we believe Jesus answered the question for which no one has an answer on their own: “What are we going to do about death?” What Christians celebrate at Easter is that Jesus died and was buried, and he rose again and was seen alive again by many people. What I personally find encouraging about Easter is that it invites me to live more closely to the veil separating heaven and Earth. It helps me be hopeful about living there, and it helps me not be so afraid. That’s why I’m a Christian. That’s why I celebrate Easter.
Nelson Ould is lead pastor of Community West Church in Richmond Virginia. He and his wife of six years, Lisa, welcomed their teenage daughter, Galyna, into their family three years ago.
”Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.”(C.H. Spurgeon, 1834-1892)
