|
|
Death Isn't What It Used To Be
I sat on the floor, holding the small life in my hands, waiting and
watching as it passed from here to another place. It was late,
sometime after midnight. Cold and raining outside. Inside the house
all the lights were off except for a small kitchen glow. I sat in the
dining room, next to the open box that the bird had been in the day
before.
A baby bird, nearly ready to fly, had tumbled out of the nest.
Injured, it had been discovered and picked up by my children. They
wanted to save it. I knew when I first saw it that it would likely not
make it. But I told them they could keep it inside where it was dry
and warm.
For a day or so it behaved as though it might survive, eating and
drinking what was offered. But by the second night, it was clear that
the bird would not live. It was a week night, with school and work the
next day. The children and then my wife and I finally went to bed.
I don't remember if I got up in the night because I was thirsty,
because I needed to use the restroom, or just to check on the bird.
But I walked over to the box and looked in on it.
It was too weak to
remain upright, so I got down on the floor, next to the box, and took
the little life into my hands. I didn't want it to be alone when the
time came. The breathing was fast, shallow, and
uneven. I held it close, to keep it warm, and I may have prayed.
In those days, I wasn't very close to God. I had drifted away from the
warmth of the Father's love in Jesus Christ. I still prayed about many
things, because I knew that no one can live long on the earth without
God's help and blessing. But I didn't seek to obey the Lord or to know
His will for my life.
I wanted the bird to live. I didn't want my children to face its
death. But I had little doubt that it would soon be gone. Time sifted
by unnoticed, ticking quietly away. The small life lay in my hands,
breathing and waiting. I waited with it.
Physical death is always a part of life. Some of my very earliest
memories are of facing death in various forms. When I was about three
I discovered baby kittens that had been killed by the local tom. I
remember being told when I was five of the girl my age, a few houses
away, that had died from eating poison. I remember catching snatches
of news stories on the radio reporting a woman's death.
Real death was very different to my young mind than the gunfights I
saw in TV westerns. Real death was unnaturally cold, an alien and
tragic thing. I feared it and hated it.
But after many years, sitting there as an adult, holding that small
bird, already troubled with the untimely theft of yet another life, I
finally glimpsed the other side of death. I was able to witness, in
the tiniest measure, the passage from this dark, cold earth, to a
truly wonderful place. I can still feel the radiant warmth of that
heavenly dawning on my face.
I know, it sounds crazy.
Outside, the night continued cold and dark and raining. The room where
I waited and watched was still dark, with only a kitchen light making
a hole in the gloom. But the darkness was not everywhere. For as the
dying bird reached the end of its struggle, the little body moved
some, and it raised its head, opening its eyes one last time. It
looked up toward the ceiling, and then stretched out both wings to
flap once or twice, as though in full and glorious flight. It was not
a shuddering spasm, as one might expect, but focused and directed
flight, even though the body was too weak to leave my hands.
Watching, I could see that the little bird was responding to something
well beyond the ceiling of the dark room. Its gaze was fixed and it
took flight with power and ease, even as the lifeless body collapsed,
resting at last. I was there, and for a few seconds I could also see
past the dark room, past the rainy night, up into bright clouds of
gold and pink and endless height, high above all the gloom of a
troubled universe, and ever beyond that, into a bright new morning.
The passing of that little bird into a place that knows no death was
so startling that the wonder eclipsed my own dread of the bird's final
moments. I had expected to be depressed, left again with the cold
reality of death. But as it turned out, when the cold darkness of
death is finished, reality goes on, possessing something more.
Life had surprised me. Life and something more profound than mere hope
overtook the moment that death had worked so hard to claim. Death
turned out to be a passing shadow, just another fading memory of a
dark world left behind.
I had expected loss, the familiar sadness that comes when we are
reminded again that even the most innocent creatures of this world
must suffer and die. But the loss had been swallowed up in happy
discovery. I had been there, watching and waiting with the tiny bird
until it passed from this place to another. And so I had been allowed
to catch the tiniest glimpse of that other place. I had felt the
warmth of that glorious dawn on my face and in my very soul.
Hours later, the black night finally gave way to a rainy, gray sky. It
was cold, damp and gloomy outside. But the cold rain and heavy gloom
of the clouds could not break through the golden warmth that remained
in my heart. I had looked up and beyond the covering veil. I had seen
the other side.
Death still comes in its myriad forms to every living creature of this
world. But it is not the final act. And it can never grip my heart
again with its cold dread. The terror of death has been taken away.
Right in the middle of human history, God sent His Messenger from
heaven. Jesus came to tell us, He said, about heavenly reality. He
revealed things that He knew about, things eternal and mysterious to
us. He came as light and life into this dark place. He portrayed for
us the truth about God and the realm beyond what we see around us.
Simply telling us, though, was not the mission of Jesus. He also
opened the way for each and every one of us. He made it possible for
all of us to be with God. He opened up the door to heaven and and
eternal life, that we might see the glory of God. Jesus became the
way, the life, the very truth of God. He came to give us wings of
glory, enabling us to one day pass from this place into that perfect
dawning of God.
And so now as I perform daily activities, I wait and I watch. I am
eager to take my flight into the golden dawn of life in eternity.
Paul wrote about his own anticipations, saying,
"...we do not lose heart. Even though our outer self is perishing, our
inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary
affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all
measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be
seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is
eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed,
we have a building from God, a house not made with hands -- eternal in
the heavens..." (2 Corinthians 4:16-5:1)
"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? ...thanks
be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1
Corinthians 15:55 & 57)
Jim
|
|
