A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON DEATH

SEEING DEATH IN A NEW LIGHT

As a college student back in the ‘80's, I had the rare privilege of having a job during vacations. One day, sitting at my desk in the office I heard a loud crunch from an adjacent building outside. My colleagues and I looked at one another and asked, "What was that?" We all suspected it wasn't good whatever it was. Word came to us swiftly that a bucket that had broken loose and come crashing down on him had killed a construction worker. He was on his lunch break with three of his friends when it happened but they escaped unharmed.

When it was time to go to lunch a number of fellow workers warned me that the body had not yet been moved and it wasn't something I wanted to see. I didn't want to but I wanted to see it at the same time. Curiosity got the better of me. And they were right. It was not a pretty sight. His body was slumped forward on his belly, with his arms dangling in front of the corpse. What once was a head was now an extended smear of red, white and pink. I couldn't explain my emotions. I can only recall a sinking hopeless despondency that wouldn't leave me the rest of that day. One of the fellows at the office said for me. "It makes you lose hope in life."

Up to that time, I had not really seen death up close. I could barely recall my grandfather who had passed on years earlier. Then it started calling closer to home. Six years later, a very dear friend was killed in a car wreck just a couple of months before she would be the matron of honor at our wedding. Four years later, my brother with whom we had been very close died of pneumonia. Two years later, my best friend was also killed in a car wreck. The latter death hurt the most. He was a young man, newly married with a young daughter and newborn baby, full of life, active and greatly loved across the country. He was moving up in his profession and had everything going for him. I couldn't reconcile all the possibilities with the damaged form that lay unmoving before me. "Why, why Lord? Why do you take the youngest, those showing the most promise in life?" They left behind young families and friends who will never find another like them. Each was unique in his or her own way.

My pastor answered my questions - sort of, at my friend's funeral. He asked, "If you have a garden of roses and you wanted to pick a few, which ones would you pick?" We all knew the answer. "You pick the freshest, the youngest and the one that has just come into bloom." Then why wouldn't God pick from the garden of life those that are fresh and young and have pleased him the most? They are His afterall, as is all life. Then the pastor added from Psalm 116:15,

"Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." (NIV)

God sees the whole picture. I have only but a glimpse of this thin wafer of eternity we call time. Who am I, with my myopic vision to question why? Well, as a human who loved these dearly departed and seeing what they left behind, I would ask why. But to dwell on it and become embittered would achieve little. When they pass on do they not go to a better place? Is it not like a relative or friend who goes to the U.S. or some other foreign land? Some we never see or hear of again yet we don't mourn them. Yet they are as good as dead to us. But for our brothers and sisters who are departed in Christ, we will see them again. All the more reason to rejoice with the Lord as they go ahead of us from this life to the next.