& Dying?

The paper is full of stories of people dying this week. The war between Lebanon and Israel is killing thousands of innocent people needlessly.

What is worth dying for?

We're surrounded by people dying. Its a fact. Like the REM song says, "Everybody hurts sometimes," and then they die. I recently preached at Awaken and one of my many mistakes was that I talked a lot about death. As I've written here before a good friend of mine recently died of prostate cancer. During my trauma surgery rotation I experienced my first "code". The patient soon died. On general surgery call I saw a patient in emergency with a ruptured splenic artery aneurysm for whom very risky lifesaving surgery was an option but carried an extremely low chance of success. he had maybe a 75% chance of dying on the OR table. He choose instead to spend his final few hours with his family and die in the emergency department.

What is worth this dying thing. A philosopher might say its the price we pay for the privilege of life. That doesn't cut it. The biblical cliche is what Paul says in Philippians 1:20-21:

...everything happening to me in this jail only serves to make Christ more accurately known, regardless of whether I live or die. They didn't shut me up; they gave me a pulpit! Alive, I'm Christ's messenger; dead, I'm his bounty. Life versus even more life! I can't lose.

& Dying isn't the issue for Paul. Christ is the issue. The rest is moot.

Let me learn how to be so deeply in love with Christ, that death by trauma, accident, or ICBM is not even a fleeting thought compared to my actions for the glory of this God whose chosen to love my first.