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| Pray for the dying |
All of this reminded me of a chapter in my book HOLD FAST, written after my father died of cancer nine years ago.
Emmanuel’s Land
Revelation 22
Glory and oxygen
Nearly
fifty years ago, my grandfather stood anxiously beside the deathbed of my great
grandfather in the small coastal hospital in Hoquium, Washington.
Like most men of his generation, Charles Wesley Bond had done and could do
anything that needed doing. Though surrounded by hard working and hard living
loggers and mill workers, my great grandfather had lived a careful Christian
life. For his zealous sharing of the Gospel, he was called “The Preacher” by
his neighbors.
Though he
had been unresponsive for several days, and the doctors gave the family no hope
of recovery, he suddenly opened his eyes and raised his hands toward heaven. As
my father told the story, a look of recognition and wonder spread across his
features, and he said, “Glory! Glory!” and died.
My great grandfather’s death
reminds me of Stephen who “looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and
Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I see heaven opened
and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’” (Acts 7:56). My great
grandfather’s final word also makes me profoundly grateful for God’s
faithfulness to his promise to be the God of his children’s children.
I’m equally grateful for my last
conversation with my grandfather, Elmer Elwood Bond, when he was ninety-one
years old. He was lonely for my grandmother, who had died some years before,
and weary of the world. “Dougie,” he said, hands clasped behind his back, as we
slowly walked along the corridor of his assisted-living facility, “I’m homesick
for heaven.”
After
two-and-a-half years of chemotherapy, a stem-cell transplant, radiation, and
sixteen bone-marrow biopsies, my father was in what doctors call “final-stage
leukemia.” He had a series of mini strokes in the days before he died. After
one of them as he slowly regained consciousness, he looked bewildered, and
asked what time it was. I told him it was getting closer to time for heaven,
and that in heaven he wouldn’t go up to Paul or Moses, or Bunyan or Spurgeon,
or Jesus, and ask what time it was. I felt his hand faintly squeeze mine, and
he smiled.
Then a strange thing happened. His
bewilderment disappeared; he seemed to relax, and a look of profound peace came
over him. As he to struggled to speak, what came from his lips were words of
gratitude and praise. “So blessed,” he repeated several times.
A day or two later, his final word
was “oxygen,” and then he died. I’ll admit, at first I felt let down that his
final word was just “oxygen,” and I ached that he had had to suffer so much.
Then, as a balm to my grief in the days after he died, it occurred to me how
similar my Lord’s dying words were: “I thirst.”
Heaven means dying
Talk of
heaven used to make me pretty uncomfortable. Read a passage like the last
chapter of the Bible and it all sounds overwhelmingly wonderful, beyond
imagining, thrilling beyond words. Still, for most young men, the nagging
uneasiness persists. Sit by your father’s bedside as he calls for oxygen and
then dies, and there’s good reason for the uneasiness.
I remember avoiding deep
conversation with my parents about heaven and longings to go there that from
time to time flickered on my affections; I was afraid that if I told them my
warmest thoughts about heaven, those words would become self-fulfilling
premonitions, and they would be retelling them at my funeral a few days later.
And there’s the clincher. It wasn’t
heaven I had the aversion to; it was what I had to pass through to get there
that made me uneasy. Columnist George F. Will tells the story of a cleric, who,
when “asked how one might come to understand the Church’s teaching on Heaven
and Hell, answered succinctly: ‘Die.’” There’s the rub. It was dying that made
me try to suppress thoughts of heaven, and dying makes a young man rather
uneasy. Check that. It makes most young men nothing short of terrified. Thus,
as a teenager, I pushed thoughts of dying—and of heaven--as far into the future
as I could, so far that for long stretches I deluded myself into thinking it
would never happen at all.
I did this, and you do this, for a
reason. Today, young men are usually healthy, full of life, strong, ambitious.
You may even feel invincible and imagine that you contain the world, that you
will always be “in the pink,” as Edwardian English gentlemen glibly called it.
But if you lived in any other
century than you do, or in any other part of the world than you do, you would
not be so inclined to think this way. One hundred years ago the average man
lived to be only forty-eight years old, and one out of ten babies died before
they were a year old. Go further back in history and mortality rates soared
higher still. Saintly Samuel Rutherford lost six children and his wife before
his own death in 1661.
Or review
the rare Huguenot church records from Rouen
after a wave of le contagion swept
through the congregation. Imagine the grief and anguish of Louise Simon when
her husband Guillaume died and was buried October 22, 1635. Three days later,
still reeling from her loss, she must bury her daughter Marion, and three days
after that she must bury her ten-year-old daughter Jeanne and on the same day
her eighteen-year-old, Elizabeth. The rough wind still blew. Not four days
later she would bury yet another daughter, Marguerite.
Life was
filled with pain and loss in those days, and so it is for many Christians today
who suffer disease and persecution. But admit it. All this is galaxies away
from your life and experience. Read the history; watch the news reports of
suffering around the globe--none of it really sinks in.
Heaven on earth
Most young men are full of energy,
curiosity, and enthusiasm. You have friends and sports, and most of you have
prosperity and lots of toys that contribute to the delusion. You might even be
tempted to ask, “How much better can heaven be than all this?” The pleasures of
life lie all about you. The familiar things are so full of delight that it’s,
frankly, difficult to imagine misery, pain, and loss, the constant reminders of
reality in virtually all other worlds except yours. And when you’ve got it all
it’s a simple matter to delude yourself into thinking that the good life will
last forever.
In the most famous American Puritan
sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, preached July 8, 1741, at second
meeting house in Enfield, Connecticut, Jonathan Edwards said that “the children
of men miserably delude themselves in confidence in their own strength and
wisdom; they trust to nothing but shadow.”
Thanks to good things like modern
medicine and free market economics, the delusion is potent. Unlike in Edwards’
time, today young men rarely if ever see sick and dying people. We are
surrounded by so much prosperity and pleasure that it’s finally difficult to
convince ourselves that heaven could be any better.
Life has many foretastes of
heaven—even for many unbelievers. But for the Christian, life lived in obedience
to God in this world yields rich foretastes of eternal joy in heaven. Puritan
preacher and Westminster
divine, Joseph Caryl, observed in 1653 that “All saints shall enjoy a heaven
when they leave this earth; some saints enjoy a heaven while they are here on
earth.” But the danger comes when we grow content with the mere foretastes and
begin thinking that joy now is everything. Worse yet, we begin to imagine that
money and temporal pleasures are what bring the foretastes. Think that way and
it only takes a nudge before you care nothing for heaven. You’ve come full
circle and are back to seeking heaven in earthly things. It’s a fruitless
search.
One of the problems with earthly pleasures is that they are fleeting.
“It was heavenly while it lasted,” we say of a walk on the beach at sunset, or
a sail in the moonlight, or a plate of Panang curry, or a bowl of favorite ice
cream. You name it. The highest pleasure you can find in this life does not
last. It’s over in a flash.
But not so with heavenly pleasures. “You will fill me with joy in your
presence,” wrote David in Psalm 16:11, “with eternal pleasures at your right
hand.” Eternal pleasures—that means that they will last and never fade in
intensity, that they will never cease to give you the excitement and thrill, or
the peaceful relaxation, or the accelerating flood of experience that literally
takes your breath away.
See through the shadows
Nevertheless, it is in our nature
to pitch our hopes on what we can see, on the familiar things that gratify us
now, and in so doing to pitch our hopes on earth. So how do we make our way
through the shadows?
Puritan preacher, Richard Baxter
faced the same question in his parish in Kidderminster
and wrote of it in his most enduring book Saints’
Everlasting Rest.
Come to a man who
hath the world at will and tell him, ‘This is not your happiness; you have
higher things to look after,’ and how little will he regard you! But when
affliction comes, it speaks convincingly, and will be heard when preachers
cannot. What warm, affectionate, eager thoughts we have of the world till
affliction cool them and moderate them! How few and cold would our thoughts of
heaven be, how little should we care for coming thither, if God would give us
rest on earth! When the world is worth nothing, then heaven is worth something.
To see clearly here, you and I need to reconnect ourselves with the
realities of sickness and death. We need our comfortable thoughts of the world
and its pleasures cooled by facing the reality of sin-induced affliction in our
fallen world. Then and only then will we be disposed to see and value heaven in
proportion to its deserts.
While writing this chapter, I was
called out in the night to go to the bedside of an eighty-six-year-old member
of our congregation, Frank Starr, a World War II combat veteran who fought with
the 82nd Airborne. His dear wife called to say that he was not doing
well, that he was in Intensive Care at the Veterans hospital in Seattle, Washington
and that the hospital had sent a cab for her. She asked if I would come. The
doctor did not sound hopeful. “The CAT scan shows that his lungs are full of
clots,” he said. “At any moment one of those could dislodge. He is a very sick
man.”
Surprised that he was breathing so
easily, I leaned over him. “How are you, Frank?” I asked. With a twinkle in his
eyes, he replied as he had for many years, “Pretty good for a no-good.” And
then I said, as I had replied to him many times, that I knew someone who made
it his business to make no-goods good. “Thank you, Jesus,” he replied softly.
The doctor, accustomed to being
around dying people, kept commenting on how peaceful Frank was--when the CAT
scan looked so grim. Impressive as it is, medical technology is really pretty
limited. Things like peace with God, heaven just across the river, eternal
pleasures at God’s right hand for evermore—none of that registers well on a CAT
scan.
Seeing this dear old man hoping in
Christ and longing for heaven as he lay afflicted and dying helped me to value
heaven more and earth less. The same will be true for you. “Illness sanctified
is better than health,” observed poet William Cowper. Like Baxter, Cowper
understood that affliction, rightly understood, will turn the Christian from
deluded contentment with the partial things of this life to wonder and longing
for the fullness of heaven—the death of death, eternal joys, pleasures
forevermore.
Taking aim
Many things in a fallen world are
counterintuitive. The young man who will have real joy and satisfaction in this
life never gets it by striving after earthly things. He must set his face
toward the Celestial
City, toward heaven. “Aim at Heaven and you get earth thrown
in,” wrote C. S. Lewis. “Aim at earth and you get neither.”
A wise young man--in spite of vigorous health, strength, and a lifetime
of opportunity and privilege before him--sets his affections on things above
and lays up treasures in heaven, treasures that can never be taken away, that
never fade or rust or betray, and that satisfy now and forever. Set your sights
on earthly pleasures and you’ll consume your life in the futile pursuit of
rainbows—but never find a single one.
A thoughtful young man must begin
early cultivating a clear sight of heaven. This demands that you unmask the
familiar things that cloud your vision. You must grow up in faith and be a man
in order to set your sights on heaven, and then you must order your life with a
view to getting there, whatever the cost.
The fundamental problem for most
young men is that they set their sights only on what they can see right now.
They imagine that health and prosperity will last forever, that their lungs
will never be full of blood clots, that only other people get cancer, that old
people die, that life now is as good as heaven. Brace yourself like a man. Unmask
the delusion. Expose the fraud. It’s all a lie. Stop believing it!
Speak to
yourself like Bunyan’s Mr. Standfast as he faced dying and the Celestial City just beyond.
The thoughts of
what I am going to, and of the conduct that waits for me on the other side,
doth lie as a glowing coal at my heart.
I see myself now at the end of my journey; my toilsome days are
ended. I am going now to see that head
that was crowned with thorns, and that face which was spit upon for me. I have formerly lived by hearsay and faith:
but now I go where I shall live by sight, and shall be with Him in whose
company I delight myself.
Do you
delight yourself in the company of Jesus? Do you practice the spiritual
disciplines that put you in the company of Jesus: daily prayer, Bible reading
and meditation, heartfelt and manly singing of praise to God, fellowship and
godly conversation? Heaven will be eternal pleasure because you will be in the
company of King Jesus. Practice the presence of Christ in your daily life, in
your entertainments, in your friendships, and you will be fitting yourself for
heaven.
Be ruthless with entertainments
that focus your sights on the easy-come, easy-go frivolities that pass for
pleasure in this life. Cut off the music or movies or friends that support the
delusion that you need to live for the immediate gratification found in worldly
things. An important way to do this is to take your stand with friends like Mr.
Standfast—and hold fast with them to the end. The Bible is full of such men—Joshua,
Job, Peter, Paul--and so is Church history.
Farewell world
December 22, 1666, after a month of
prison and torture, young Covenanter preacher Hugh M’Kail, flanked by the
king’s soldiers, staggered through the gray streets of Edinburgh. M’Kail had been arrested and
condemned to death for complicity in the Battle of Rullion Green, a
well-intentioned but disastrous stand taken by farmers in defense of “the Crown
rights of the Redeemer in his Kirk.” Few among them were trained soldiers, and
only a handful carried muskets or basket-hilt claymores. It all began in Galloway when a handful of farmers attempted to defend an
old man against the unjust brutalities of the king’s dragoons. M’Kail had
joined the Pentland Rising, as the king’s Privy Counsel called it, as chaplain
and preacher.
Now the pale young minister paused
at the foot of the scaffold, and after declaring that he’d seen in his
condemnation, “a clear ray of the majesty of the Lord,” he sang the
thirty-first Psalm. His body racked with pain from weeks of torture, he mounted
the first step of the scaffold and said, “I care no more to go up this ladder,
and over it, than if I were going to my father’s house.” At the next agonizing
step he paused, “Every step is a degree nearer heaven.”
When he finally reached the top, he
took out his Bible and read from the last chapter. “And he showed me a pure
river of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the
Lamb…” After encouraging the faithful, he prayed:
“Now I leave off to speak any more
to creatures, and turn my speech to thee, O Lord. Now I begin a conversation
with God, which shall never be broken off. Farewell, father and mother, friends
and relations! Farewell, the world and all delights! Farewell, meat and drink!
Farewell, sun, moon and stars!”
A hush fell over the crowds; even
the king’s dragoons were silent, and the fervent young man’s prayer was not
drowned out by drum rolling. M’Kail continued.
“Welcome, God and Father! Welcome,
sweet Lord Jesus, Mediator of the New Covenant! Welcome, blessed Spirit of
grace, God of all consolation! Welcome, glory! Welcome, eternal life--!”
His prayer was cut off as the
hangman tightened the noose around his neck. Hugh M’Kail’s confidence at the
gallows reminds me of renowned Bible
commentator Matthew Henry’s statement, “He whose head is in heaven need not
fear to put his feet into the grave.”
All this is what
the Puritans called dying grace, but you don’t get it by setting your sights on
earth. You prepare to die well, like a man, by “setting your affections on
things above,” by cultivating a love and longing for heaven. Only then are you
prepared to live your life to the hilt and to die hoping confidently in Christ,
as M’Kail did.
Live life aiming at glory, as my great
grandfather did, and you will get bits of heaven now--and eternal pleasures
forever after. “For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm to the end” (Hebrews
3:14).
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