A Very Palpable Hit

Last night after a yummy impromptu supper with family, we settled down for an after-dinner chat that ranged from money worries to politics and then to medical care issues – my doctor is no longer performing mammograms; they are too costly. On the conversation rambled, arriving at our experiences with family members who were subjected to extraordinary medical procedures which prolonged their lives, but added nothing to the quality of them.  And then we stumbled onto our plans for our funerals, and the cost differential funerals versus cremation – amidst much nervous laughter.

Maybe it was just whistling past the proverbial graveyard, but suffering and death are the borders within which we experience love, and joy and peace. Birth is the unique gate through which we passed into this pasture, and death its only exit.

This exit, death, intrigues poets and playwrights and surely, increasingly, has my attention! 

Death in itself is nothing; but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where.
John Dryden. 1631-1701. Aurengzebe. Act iv. Sc. 1.

            “Death is a very palpable hit.” (Hamlet Act 5, scene 2, 280–283)

This morning, knowing the fear and anticipating that hit, I remember and celebrate a promise made to a handful of men who could not grasp its meaning for a few days:  Because I live, you also shall live.  (John 14:19)  Instead of a terror, death has become the instrument without which I can’t be freed from its very clutches. (Hebrews 2:14)

But with that hope, comes a caution, dear reader -- Many who plan to seek God at the eleventh hour die at 10:30. (An anonymous alert drawn from John 8:24.)

May God bless your celebration of this day, gentle reader, so that if you fear death and all that attends it, your fear of death becomes the confidence in what I hope for and assurance about what I do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)

* Quotations from Christians Quoting.