Everybody goes sometime

At the risk of offending a few readers, I'm going to mention a book that many two-year-olds review on a regular basis. It's called Everyone Poops. A reference to one of those facts of life we become accustomed to at an early age.

And while the book describes one of our highly necessary biological functions, it's not a bestseller for those in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s. Unless they are parents or grandparents. Been there, know that. The end.

But if someone wrote a non-fiction book titled Everybody Dies (and btw, it is a mass market paperback mystery), I wonder how many might decide to peruse its pages. Too depressing for most, to be sure.

Yet, it happens. Recover from cancer or live with diabetes or survive a liver transplant or a car crash, and your fate is certain. You will one day die; it's just a matter of time. I'm not trying to be depressing, I'm just posting this little reality check.

Today I visited with a number of people as a backup chaplain, and I was struck by how many of them were talking about death. A death of a loved one, or death that seems to be all around them, or how some live to be 104 years old, while others die young. There was melancholy and grief in the air, and I felt it, I saw the looks on their faces, the sadness in their eyes.

About the most I could tell them was that God feels their pain and grieves with them; I didn't have the time or the permission to give them more than that. But I wanted to. How I wanted them to see past death to the glorious life that awaits us. To understand that we are made for more than this, and that death is just an entryway into the best life imaginable. That we can be confident of this if we make a choice to receive God's rescue plan on our behalf.

Then death begins to look entirely different. It still stings, of course--the separation from loved ones breaks our heart, because we are not made for separation. Still, it also entices us, with the hope that we will one day leave the cares of this present world behind, to be joined with our Creator and those who have gone before us.

Death is not a thing to be feared, but for those who know where they are going, it is something to be anticipated. It's true, as the Bible says:

Death has been swallowed up in victory! (I Cor. 15:54)

If anything, when a loved one passes on, our ache for the future intensifies. We were made for more than this--than this sin, and pain, and uncertainty, and turmoil--oh, yes, there is something more. When we close our eyes, we try to imagine it, we try to anticipate the removal of struggle and heartache; our hearts yearn for something we can't completely identify. For some odd reason, when I think of heaven, I sometimes get a clear picture of this really perfect afternoon I spent at the Pentwater, Michigan beach, where the sun was bright and the temperature was perfect and my soul and body felt completely at ease, completely comfortable. Perhaps it was the absence of any strife at all.

We just know we will be in the presence of God. And that in His presence, fears and hesitation and ambivalence and soul-searing pain will vanish. That'll be the day!

Everybody goes sometime. It's the knowing where you're headed that changes everything in the here and now. (John 3:16) You come to grips with death as an inevitability--but you know it is not the end of the story. You start to live your life with eternity in your rearview mirror. It will catch up to you soon, but for now, every smile, every act done in love, every sacrifice and joy you experience here matters more than it did before.

And, honestly, this is why Jesus called it abundant life, to the full. Because when you know that leaving here means you are arriving in the presence of the God of the Universe, there's a deep-seated confidence that makes an average day better than good.

Everybody goes sometime. And I, for one, am glad.