July 29
“Brothers… you will not grieve like the rest, who are without hope.” (1 Thess. 4:13)
Today, we had a death in the family.
It’s not that it wasn’t expected. It was.
It’s not because our family member was advanced in years. She was only forty.
And it’s not because of some horrible disease. It wasn’t.
She died… because of a thought.
A thought she believed so adamantly that it ended up… ending her life.
Her considered solution to battle a phantom disease was to try and starve what was making her ill – and we know what starvation can do to a healthy body.
I say “considered” because she was very intelligent. She spent countless hours researching her symptoms and looking into all the possible scenarios. What she came up with, was something so rare and profound that even her doctors were scratching their heads. They all tried to steer her to other, more reasonable, possibilities – but to no avail.
Sadly, the doctors concluded that their efforts were unnecessary – and continually sent her home to battle her “illness” on her own.
She literally believed herself to death.
Jesus said this about faith… “Be it done in accord with your faith.”
I’m afraid that is true both ways… What we believe, in a sense, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Either for God’s good… or to our detriment…
But if you think that I am writing this to demean our family member because of her foolish belief – you would be wrong.
I am the one that needs to learn a lesson here.
This family member and I were never close. She was sweet-natured but strange. Almost hard to be around. Maybe that’s because she made everyone around her feel a little (or a lot) uncomfortable. (People with strange ideas often do…)
At this year’s family Christmas gathering, everyone could tell that her life was ebbing away… quickly. She could barely stand. To walk across the floor was painful and slow. The word we kept using was, “sad.”
But I wonder what a real conversation might have produced in her life. A real conversation about the Jesus I know. The Jesus that heals the broken and hurting. The Jesus that could steal life from death. The Jesus that was the author of miracles.
But I never had that conversation. I allowed my “dislike” for her “belief” to become a justification for talking about her, but never to her.
My point in all this is that it is all too easy to talk about Jesus and what He can do in people’s lives. But it is often much more difficult to BE that Jesus to people in need. She never needed a lecture on the benefits of divine healing – she needed the Author of divine healing to show up in her little world and extend His loving hand to her deeply troubled soul.
I think Jesus wanted to do that through me… but I just didn’t let it happen.
These are those moments when we realize that life is just too important to play “pretend” when people in need are dying all around us. Tomorrow is often too late to do what should be done today. It seems I have yet to learn that lesson.
I want you to know that our family member was not without hope. She DID have a faith in Jesus – and I firmly believe that, when she breathed her last, she received the ultimate healing. She escaped her frail and useless body and is now with the Lord.
So, even though this case is tragic… and sad… and regrettable… in the end, her “phantom illness” could not keep her from the arms of her Savior.
In this, we rejoice.
