When Death Becomes Life

I walk down white hallways, the ones so familiar now.

These…..the exiting ones.  Clinging to a thread….from eternity.

They dangle on breaths.  Finding life in respirators, and pills, and televisions that spill out glimpses of the world they once knew.

These sterile walls….their home.  A refuge….their middle earth…..between here and Heaven’s Song….

And I taste it in the air.  It is bitter.  Stagnant.  Death.  In nostrils wishing for escape….

Like so many inside, gripping fate……with hesitant fingers…..

And I wait for death to take hold.  Of uncle…..and so much more.  My will. My own way.  The life of those around me.

And I hear God in this silence. The silence that easily resounds His name.  And I stretch desperate ears to listen…..listen to what He says.

The story of my sister-in-law surfaces. How she once was old and confined to her own personal dying.  While children and husband went on living without her.

And how death of flesh made her spirit rise.  True faith come alive.  And I see it in her eyes….as I speak with her this Christmas.

Her body pain has stripped her gloriously……..of silly things that don’t really matter anymore.  The petty things that once held such great weight.  And created so much pressure.

And how, though husband has ministry that reaches thousands upon thousands each year…..very few knew…..her physical state…..and how inside she was suffering and clinging to life….

And I wonder now…..when our physical bodies decay…….is it like a wine press that presses away so much of what we once thought was so important?

For, it seems then, life becomes simple again. Clearer somehow.

And I wonder if physical pain, and trials, and suffering….brings some kind of outpouring of extended grace?

And I think of uncle, just rooms away.  And how when he was wriggling in pain….his ear was keenly tuned to the gospel.

Yet, during times of reprieve……self-sufficiently surfaced.  Ears closed.  Eyes turned away from the message of salvation.

And could it be, pain is actually a gift….to shift our self-centered eyes to Him…..to draw us closer to Our Father.  Instead of rising in our own ways…..leaning on our own strength.

And I think of Paul’s request.  Take this thorn from my flesh.  Yet, God refused….as his pain served to keep him humble. 

And I wonder when we pull out our own thorns.  Medicate our own sores.  Run from.  Deny.  And heal our own wounds…..

Are we really taking away from the intended work of Christ?  Are we playing God……instead of surrendering to the work He wants to do in us? 

And isn’t it when suffering of any kind surfaces, that wisdom increases, and we can discern most efficiently, the difference between gold and dust.

The dying.  A birthing of spiritual eyes.  The suffering.  An awakening of eternal life….within our own souls.

The faith rise.

Is it then that we need, and look to, and cling to a hope outside of ourselves most?  And isn’t that what it’s really about anyway……a hope outside of ourselves?  Isn’t that what it says in Romans 5:5?

When suffering comes…..our hope in a Savior rises?

And how our friends lost their child.  Born disabled.  Caring for her.  Until age eight.  When she died.

And how out of her seed of death their ministries rises.  A wheelchair ministry touching hundreds around the world.

And I wonder if the death of the Saints….is the seed to all ministry.  All true ministry…..anyway.

And how…..

I have fought death for far too long.

Wiggling and squirming and rejecting and learning……death is not always like we think.

A curse.

Could it be……death…..especially when it’s death of self……can be a gift…..if we see it with the right eyes?

And I return to room of where our uncle is dying.

Husband hears him whispering…..from his painful suffering.

“Yes, I believe…….Jesus died on the cross for me.”

And I praise God for slow, painful dying.  Because I know it was the only thing that led Tio closer to Jesus.

And the questions beams out of joy from this profession…..

Do I…….do we……..embrace death in whatever form it takes in our Spirits.  Bending, and trusting, and believing God will use it……..to bring His loved ones closer to the feet of Jesus.

Or do we, in our flesh…..keep on fighting.  And living…….and resisting…..

Living only for comfort…..and ourselves.

And I thank Him for the grain that falls to the ground.  Dying…..to produce more.  Yes, more……

A harvest.  Yes, a harvest……of souls…..

All around.

Linking with Jen