Psalm 116:15 – Death in Perspective
The cartoonists had full rein this week at the New Yorker magazine. One of the efforts they featured had a priest in full vestments and a formal funeral setting, but offering the bit of hospitality, "Today‘s service will be using the hashtag “Jerry‘sDead.“
If we were entirely comfortable with that, there would be no need for the ink and the effort. If it were entirely farcical, it wouldn't have gotten anyone's attention as a favorite cartoon. This is a still shot of our culture with some bite because everything, even the death of a loved one has become fodder for social media. It's not enough to attend to signs of respect. We need to be SEEN doing so by a wider audience than is in our immediate physical surroundings.
Most of the time, our experience with death is so peripheral that we only think about it well enough to avoid scandal with token gestures. CS Lewis warns in The Screwtape Letters that the removal of death from our everyday experience is much to the demons' advantage. With death largely restricted to nursing homes, the demons are able to distract us from the daily reality that we are going to die. It is for other people, we tell ourselves, and for us to be seen as upstanding mourners for those unfortunate souls.
This week, though, the reality broke through. I lost a friend at 31. Somebody who had given of their time the week before to drive me to work, and of their strength to hoist me into his truck had no more of either in the Earthly sense. A widow is without a husband. Three children are without a father.
Death isn't just for other people in other decades, to be observed and forgotten as soon as the motorcade has passed by. Death is a reckoning we all will will face. Since we know not when, we must be ready. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. (2 Corinthians 5:8)
But if biblically the impact of death is pressing through our willful distractions, it is also precious. That's the word the New King James Version uses to translate Psalm 116:15. God's Word declares, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. Each passing of one of His elect isn't a hashtag or a routine. Although human suffering and death are not worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed by the comparison of Romans 8:18, although it is nowhere near as unjust or universally traumatic as the death of His Son, He still knows what it is for us to go through death. He considers the rite of passage itself precious.
If we were entirely comfortable with that, there would be no need for the ink and the effort. If it were entirely farcical, it wouldn't have gotten anyone's attention as a favorite cartoon. This is a still shot of our culture with some bite because everything, even the death of a loved one has become fodder for social media. It's not enough to attend to signs of respect. We need to be SEEN doing so by a wider audience than is in our immediate physical surroundings.
Most of the time, our experience with death is so peripheral that we only think about it well enough to avoid scandal with token gestures. CS Lewis warns in The Screwtape Letters that the removal of death from our everyday experience is much to the demons' advantage. With death largely restricted to nursing homes, the demons are able to distract us from the daily reality that we are going to die. It is for other people, we tell ourselves, and for us to be seen as upstanding mourners for those unfortunate souls.
This week, though, the reality broke through. I lost a friend at 31. Somebody who had given of their time the week before to drive me to work, and of their strength to hoist me into his truck had no more of either in the Earthly sense. A widow is without a husband. Three children are without a father.
Death isn't just for other people in other decades, to be observed and forgotten as soon as the motorcade has passed by. Death is a reckoning we all will will face. Since we know not when, we must be ready. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. (2 Corinthians 5:8)
But if biblically the impact of death is pressing through our willful distractions, it is also precious. That's the word the New King James Version uses to translate Psalm 116:15. God's Word declares, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. Each passing of one of His elect isn't a hashtag or a routine. Although human suffering and death are not worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed by the comparison of Romans 8:18, although it is nowhere near as unjust or universally traumatic as the death of His Son, He still knows what it is for us to go through death. He considers the rite of passage itself precious.
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