Category Archives: Life and death

Remembering The Titanic’s First and Last Voyage

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by in Life and death, Titanic

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A local TV news and weather channel’s app on my phone includes other features of interest, one being “This Day In History.” After scanning the headlines about last night’s shootings, car wrecks and warnings about yet another oncoming winter storm to hit the Great Plains, I scrolled down to read that on April 10, 1912, “The Titanic set sail from Southampton, England, on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic Ocean headed for New York City.”

Billed as the ship that “not even God could sink,” after the starboard side of the RMS Titanic struck the iceberg it took only two hours and 40 minutes for her to disappear under the eerily placid waters of the Atlantic about 375 miles south of Newfoundland. The White Star Line’s much acclaimed 46,300-ton truly titanic luxury vessel sank, along with more than 1,500 passengers, 1,200 pudding dishes, 1,000 oyster forks, 400 asparagus tongs and countless other miscellaneous comfort items to the bottom of the sea.

The winter of 1911-1912 had been unusually mild. Higher-than-normal temperatures in the North Atlantic had caused more icebergs to drift away from the west coast of Greenland than at any time in the previous 50 years. If not for that one unseasonably warm winter, perhaps the Titanic might never have had an iceberg to hit.

It has been noted that wireless operators aboard had received warnings from other vessels in the area about large concentrations of icebergs in the area. The fact that the fateful, fatal collision might have been avoided makes the disaster even more tragic.

Billy Graham is quoted as remarking that “The greatest surprise in life to me is the brevity of life.” Surprised would be an understatement in the minds of passengers swallowed up in the frigid waters and those fortunate few clinging to lifeboats that night, never imagining that tomorrow might not come.

Perhaps the adage “Today is the first day of the rest of your life” is a notion we should realize every day, like the Roman poet Horace exclaims, “Carpe diem!” or “seize the day.” The New Testament writer James says, “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” Life can be portrayed as brief, no matter how many or how few birthdays we have experienced on this planet. The way we choose to interpret that precious span of days or years makes the biggest difference, especially when trying to understand senseless tragedies, like the sinking of the Titanic.

It seems that we can go either of two ways. We can numb ourselves in guiltless hedonism, if like Shakespeare’s Macbeth, we perceive life as not much more than “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” I prefer instead to believe that I have a purpose, that God values my existence as expressed in the well-known verse of John 3:16, and that both joy and suffering are elemental aspects of my allotted time here on earth. I side then with noted 19th Century Baptist preacher and evangelist Charles Spurgeon who wrote, “Time is short. Eternity is long. It is only reasonable that this short life be lived in the light of eternity.” Well-read in scripture undoubtedly he was familiar with Psalm 90 which says, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Let us then be wise. Eternity is a long time to be foolish about anything.

End of (My) Days

21 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by in Life and death, poem, winter

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During the winter months,
the afternoon daylight hours
are just never long enough.
When I watch the sun slip down
behind the neighborhood rooftops
I sometimes feel a bit somber.

The onset of dusk shows my eyes
what the clock says to my mind ––
time is running through my fingers
like sand through the popular
daytime TV soap opera hourglass.
And “so are the days of our lives.”

Old age has a subtle way of steadily
creeping up on me, like nightfall.
Streaks of cirrus clouds become a
canvas of bright orange and purple
watercolors running together in the
western sky, gradually fading into
ghostly shadows of gray. Finally,
a smothering blanket of darkness
unfolds from the east, dousing
the last hint of daylight.

I think it may be God’s way of daily
reminding me that sooner or later,
the final curtain of my life will
eventually drop at the end of
the last act. I can only hope for
at least a few moments of applause
and a somewhat favorable review
of my performance.

The Prince of Peace is a Warrior

25 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by in Christmas, Christmas Day, Jesus Christ, Life and death, Messiah, Prophecy

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Every Christmas season you can count on some variation of a nativity scene to make its annual appearance, pulled out of a storage box in the closet onto someone’s family room tabletop or a life-sized version all aglow welcoming church goers to holiday services.

Looking at “the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay” one might not think about spiritual warfare as an aspect of an “all is calm, all is bright” Christmas. It seems incongruous — that is, until we look at the whole picture. Thirty-three years later, the long-awaited savior, “born of a virgin” (Isaiah 7:14) “in the city of Bethlehem” (Micah 5:2), had fulfilled hundreds of additional Messianic prophesies about his life, death and resurrection, the earliest being found in Genesis 3:15. God tells the serpent, who had just beguiled Adam and Eve into sin, that One is coming Who will “crush your head.” Thus the battle began. The alarm was sounded, echoing around heaven and earth and to all who revel in darkness: My Anointed is coming. Coming to rescue and reconcile, to renew what was lost and broken, and to defeat the enemy of our souls and even death itself. Isaiah’s prophesied Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6) is just as much a warrior. (Isaiah 42:13)

“The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil,” 1 John 3:8 reports. In plain terms then, Christmas celebrates the much anticipated arrival of God’s own Son to ransom the captives, advance His kingdom and take back what the enemy stole away. (Isaiah 61:1-3) That sounds like warfare to me. Revelation 13:8 states the Lamb of God was “slain from the foundation of the world.” Long before Adam even fell, the rescue mission was ready to roll out, “in the fullness of time.” (Galatians 4:4)

So this season, in the midst of all the bright lights and candles, carols and shopping, all the baking and decorating and gift giving, maybe we should remember that from the day of His conception, Jesus was on a seek and save, search and destroy mission on our behalf so that we might declare “thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 15:57)

I wish all my readers the best Spirit-filled Christmas ever. May you recognize that a foreshadowing of the cross was cast upon the manger crib at that first nativity, and that the Christmas Story is fulfilled at Calvary. But it doesn’t end there. For those who believe, the story never ends. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) One of my favorite Christmas carols is Charles Wesley’s “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” It includes the lyrics “God and sinners reconciled.” That’s the gospel message in a nutshell, the “Good News.” May you find comfort and joy in that realization today. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

*The artwork featured is from a 6th Century mosaic in a chapel in Ravenna, Italy, titled Christ the Warrior. 

Making sense out of a senseless universe

28 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by in Happiness, Life and death, religion

≈ 2 Comments

Truth is, some folks can’t. Hopeless victims of desperate circumstance become statistics on suicide, taking themselves out of the game rather than endure another day of mental and emotional anguish. Like funny man Robin Williams. Hangs himself with his own belt. Show’s over folks. Nuthin’ more to see here. One would presume that a guy like him had it all. Family, fame, fortune. Ironically, as is the case with so many comedians like Johnny Carson and Jerry Lewis, happiness was a commodity all the money in the world couldn’t buy. Addictions, depression, broken marriages. It’s what the Smokey Robinson 1971 song is all about. “Just like Pagliacci did/I try to keep my sadness hid/Smiling in the public eye/But in my lonely room I cry/The tears of a clown/When there’s no one around.” It makes me wonder how many people actually “lead lives of quiet desperation . . .” as Thoreau wrote, wondering Why am I here and does it even matter? “. . . and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

The struggle to find and embrace significance is a prominent theme in religion, art, music, literature and everything human because it’s common to us all. It’s what we need in order to fall asleep at night, and to have a reason to get back out of bed every morning. It’s what we need to make it all worthwhile, to keep us out of the closet with a belt.

In our civilization’s ongoing quest for the meaning of life, history shows that we’ve postulated just about every theory possible, from plausible to absurd. Of course the most common efforts for explaining human existence can be found in your basic Religion 101 class along with an elective course in Introductory Philosophy thrown in. Every culture has come up with some kind of rationale to keep us from teetering into the abyss of nihilism, some sort of system with a god or gods or a higher power out there somewhere. Most ancient legends and epic narratives portray mythological deities as more human-like than divine – capricious, contriving, scandalous, fated by their faults and failures. Not much help there.

Today’s most popular options on the Religions of the World Chart have billions of followers. The self-discipline of The Buddha teaches us to meditate our way to enlightenment. Apparently many have not yet located their happy place. Or there’s the ethical politeness of Confucianism, with yin and yang, energy in constant balance, in perfect harmony, separate but equal. Which side of the taijitu are you on? Let’s crack open a couple fortune cookies and find out.

Hinduism keeps us trapped under the law of karma on a continual treadmill cycle of reincarnation. Please, just show me the way out. Remember John Lennon’s lyrics? “Instant Karma’s gonna get you/Gonna knock you right on the head/You better get yourself together/Pretty soon you’re gonna be dead.” Aren’t we all.

Even the Judaeo-Christian God of the Bible doesn’t find it necessary to explain everything. So much is hidden, mysterious, full of paradox and subjective interpretation. Not bashful about voicing complaints to the Lord about the problem of evil and suffering, psalmist King David lamented about the apparent injustices of life, that the wicked seemed to prosper while the righteous endured adversity without cause. Eventually, says the Lord, everyone will get what’s due. But for now, just wait. Have faith. Trust. Believe. I’m in control.

I think science, with all of its benefits to society and advances to be enjoyed, has coincidentally made it harder to exercise that kind of faith. Microscopes and telescopes allow us to see through that curtain of curiosity, inward and outward to worlds unimaginable. Actually, splitting the atom raises more questions than answers. Billions of galaxies spinning in an incredibly vast expanse of space reveal an intelligent designer with an extravagant sense of creativity. But why? What does it matter to me? I have a mortgage to pay and a car that needs a new muffler. By the way, what’s for dinner?

The premise of order and meaning in what we see and cannot see becomes strained, however, when our most well-intentioned spiritual convictions begin to evaporate under intense pressure. Holding on to or defending a belief system becomes especially trying when our most fervent, faith-filled, selfless prayers go unanswered. Or when we hear that a drunk driver crossed the median and plowed into a school bus full of kids returning from church camp. Several dead, dozens injured and scarred for life.

Or when an honest, hard-working man gets fired for something that wasn’t even remotely his fault. The company goes on to post record profits. Keep your resumés updated, people. Or when the poster child for perfect health and fitness drops dead while jogging. I can see the obituary now: Age 32, faithful husband, provider, father of three, gone in a whisper.

What we need is an operator’s manual, a guideline for troubleshooting through all the possible scenarios that interrupt our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Don’t you wish that there could be an easy way to get explanations for the jack-in-the-box surprises that explode in our faces? Maybe like an Ask Abby column in the newspaper. Just write out a description of your problem. Drop it in the cosmic mailbox, and then wait for the morning news to get your answer. “Dear Desperate and Confused Planet Earth Dweller. Thanks for your letter. Here’s my advice: Leave your spouse. Move to a new town. Reconcile with your mother-in-law. Then all will be well.” Or how about a 1-800 number. “Hello, um, yes. I’d like to order a better life. Yeah, one for my four-year-old girl, the one with leukemia. And could you express ship that, please? We’re running out of time.”

There seems to be enough weeping and gnashing of teeth here in this world even before the doors of heaven close for good. So what’s left? Shaking a fist at the sky? Languishing like Job, a mere pawn in a spiritual game of chess, waiting for the final checkmate to see who wins the tournament?

Isn’t it true that often we find it so much easier to “Praise God from Whom all blessings flow” when the colonoscopy test results are negative, when the bonus shows up on the paycheck, when the college scholarship is a full four-year free ride? For me it becomes a bit more challenging when I’m calling to schedule a root canal, or when I hear about my dear friends’ baby’s death, or when someone I love is struggling to deal with impossible odds against them and I can’t help fix it. Sometimes I want to write a letter back to the New Testament’s James and say, “You know that count it all joy through trials thing? Wow, that’s a tough teaching, brother!” In reality, it’s probably an impossible perspective to learn and live without a proper spiritual frame of mind, without a strong conviction in the goodness of a God Who knows me personally and desires the best for me. Unconditionally.

Last week I faced head-on an inexplicable tragedy that once again leaves me empty for answers to the ever-nagging question of “Why?”

Tyler, a good buddy of mine, came to an untimely, sudden, violent accidental death. When someone we know is diagnosed as terminal, or is old and feeble, we know the end is eventually coming; death is stalking at the door, and we are somewhat emotionally prepared when the plug is pulled. But when a vibrant, active, happy 24-year-old combat vet full of passion for life is gone in seconds, it becomes harder to wrap our heads around. Maybe we can’t. That’s why it’s so vexing. So troubling, so disturbing, and especially so much more painful now during a time reserved for the expression of peace, joy and holiday cheer.

I am deeply grieved at his passing, but I heard something during the funeral eulogy that might help me get through this. Encouraging the bereaved to stay strong through the heartache of this calamity, his pastor quoted from Chapter 5 of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. I like The Message version:

“We [those who are true followers of Christ] continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!”

Several key ideas here to ponder out of many: “ . . . for whatever God will do next.” Reality check: This is God’s universe, and so far He hasn’t consulted with me for my opinion of His agenda. Maybe I need to reread the final five chapters of the Book of Job. “Then the Lord said to Job, ‘Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him? he that reproveth God, let him answer it.’” (Job 40:1-2) KJV

I may never know all the reasons why life seems at times to unravel into a helpless heap, like a laundry basket full of soiled clothes. Hard to admit it sometimes but I will find myself in a better place when I acknowledge Who is really in control. That being said, as I develop passionate patience I suspect that God and I will continue to have serious conversations regarding my perplexities, my pain and my frustration when I’m hemmed in with troubles. I need to learn how to bear up better in the fiery forge tempering my soul. Instead of shortchanged, I need to see myself abundantly blessed, my containers ready to overflow with enough hope to spill over onto those who are desperate for a reason to carry on through their own heap of troubles.

I’m going to have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year because, in spite of my time of grief and loss concurring hand-in-hand with this season of Comfort and Joy, I choose to hope that all things will ultimately work together for good (Rom. 8:28), and to see that from God’s perspective, nothing in this universe is ever senseless.

Tetelestai

03 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by in crucifixion, Good Friday, Jesus Christ, Life and death, Messiah

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On a day we remember as Good Friday, Jesus came to the end of His mission as savior of the world on the cross when he exclaimed, “It is finished.” The Greek translation sums up the exclamation so well in one word: tetelestai, a word used in the ancient commercial world on business documents or receipts indicating that a debt had been paid –– in full. Interestingly, the word in John’s gospel is in a tense used to describe an action that has been completed in the past with results continuing into the present. It conveys an idea that has happened and it is still in effect today. Contemporary readers of John’s record of Christ’s last moments would have understood the comparison he intended to make. The new covenant blood shed by the Lamb of God once and for all paid for that which the old covenant blood of bulls and goats could only cover up.

So far removed from the events and culture of the Bible, for most of us today the theology dealing with God’s sentence of death as the inevitable result of sin and the only acceptable recompense being the sacrifice of an innocent victim to pay the price of redemption can be difficult to grasp. That’s why many old time hymns are so much better at explaining complex spiritual realities than a hundred learned commentaries. The words for the following classic example were written in 1865 by Elvina Hall, a member of the Monument Street Methodist Church in Baltimore, Maryland.

I pray you will agree indeed that Jesus Paid It All.

cano_alonso-zzz-crucifixionI hear the Savior say,
“Thy strength indeed is small;
Child of weakness, watch and pray,
Find in Me thine all in all.”
Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
For nothing good have I
Whereby Thy grace to claim,
I’ll wash my garments white
In the blood of Calv’ry’s Lamb.
When from my dying bed
My ransomed soul shall rise,
“Jesus died my soul to save,”
Shall rend the vaulted skies.

Perspective

04 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Jesus Christ, Life and death, poem

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There has to be something
better than this.
Sometimes I weep. How can there be
so much beauty and so much horror?
But my pensive lamentations are nothing
compared to those who literally suffer
without comfort.

In my own good fortune I dream in peace
through the night hours and the clock
always starts over at dawn.
Breakfast and coffee smell good and
I eat until I’m full. I enjoy art and nature.
Music is inspiring. It elevates my soul.
Our family is close. Love makes me warm all over.
I have everything I need, and some extras.
Even so, I am restless. Discontent. Doubtful.

Dale Carnegie and the Bible both say
You are what you think,
so then I should fill my head with positivity.
I need to get that half-empty glass to half-full.
Maybe things would be different though if I weren’t
scrambling to make up for my losses,
trying to repair the damage of too many decades,
running on borrowed time, helplessly watching
calendar pages fly away in the wind,
the grave always laughing in my face.

Have you ever noticed that children and dogs
have no regard for their ultimate end?
Is it better that way? No concern with eschatology?
I know why the Egyptians were so preoccupied
with prepping for the afterlife.
It’s because death looks so final.
We just cannot seem to accept that inescapable
last scenario, even if we try to invent a better one.
And as far as I know, only one person has come back
from the other side, the One who was dead
and is now alive forevermore,
to give us a glimmer of hope,
that there actually is something
better than this.

I thought prison was bad enough.

19 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by in Life and death

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Last week, on January 14 a prison transport vehicle carrying 15 people skidded off a Texas highway overpass and plunged into the path of a moving freight train. After the collision, the bus was dragged for about 200 yards along the tracks before coming to a complete stop. Officials concluded that icy roads were to blame for the crash. Two correctional officers and eight inmates died from injuries suffered in the accident.

One of the victims, 29 year-old inmate Tyler Townsend had called his mother in Benbrook the night before. “I said, ‘Let’s pray for a safe journey. Call me Sunday night,’ ” Petra Townsend recalled. “He said, ‘OK.’ ”  “I said, ‘I love you.’ He told me he loved me too, and that was it.”

She admitted that her son chose his own journey outside of the law early on, using drugs as a teenager. He went to prison twice before, for drugs and other crimes, including car theft, but managed to graduate from an alternative school, and even tried college. “I always believed he was going to change that path,” his mother told reporters. She felt that Tyler believed it, too. Sentenced to three years, Tyler was denied an early release on Dec. 28, and was scheduled to come back home next January.

A deeply religious woman, Mrs. Townsend said her son had recently been baptized in prison. She said her faith does not have room for laying blame for her son’s death. “That’s part of a plan we can’t understand. This is God’s business. This is God,” she repeated. “No, no, no. Don’t question.”

I am fairly certain that none of the men involved in this tragedy woke up that morning and expected to end up later that day in a box. Talk about bad timing – the weather, an icy overpass, the train schedule. But when it comes to death, what would be good timing? Maybe if you are 98 and languishing in a nursing home with a worn out shell of a body and a mind that long ago faded away into faint shadows of the past?

I’m going to file this story in a folder I call “My Last Breath is . . . When?” It’s a collection of news items that address the utter frailty of life, and our reluctance to admit or expect just how quickly it can change or even cease. I may post a few of those reports as time goes on. For now, considering my own inevitable fate I must reluctantly acquiesce, concurring with the admonition from James 4:14: “Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”