A Closing Word of Prayer

On Sunday, March 19^th, Joy and I attended the Ashland City Free Will Baptist Church.  The pastor there, Wayne Bess, is a friend of mine stretching back to college days.  He is in a series of sermons on Heaven.  His remarks were based on Revelation 7:9-17, broadly expositional, well illustrated, and enthusiastically delivered.  I was glad that we attended, right up to the end.

It is not unusual as a visiting minister to be asked to pray.  As we stood for the closing song, a debate began in my mind.  If Wayne called on me to pray, what should I say?  I could use the generic, “It has been good to be here. Thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to worship,” but that would mask over the question I have been pondering for about a year now.  There is a well-worn saying that expresses it this way, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die!”  The Bible tells us in Philippians 3:20 that “our citizenship is in heaven,” and a standard gospel song puts it, “This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through.”  Ok, I get it; we are to live in this world with a confident expectation of what God has promised His children about the next. The rub comes when you begin to know something about the time of your departure.

After I got my preliminary diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration, I did what doctors tell you not to do--I looked it up on the internet.  Somewhere in this process I came across the general rule that most folks with CBD live five to seven years from diagnosis.  When I mentioned this to my neurologist at my next appointment he said, “I wouldn’t take those numbers as absolute; they are just an estimate.”  I suppose it was the fact that I looked so relieved that he followed up with, “But nobody measures CBD expected life span in decades.”

Years ago, I heard Jonathan Thigpen speak in chapel at FWBBC.  He had been battling with ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, for some time at that point.  In fact, he had planned out a series of speaking engagements that he was calling his “farewell tour.”  It was a deeply moving message.  One of the lines that burned into my mind that day was, “We are all going to die.  The difference between you and me is I know what will take my life.  All of us should be ready.  I am, are you?”

Am I ready?  Yes.  Does that mean I want to leave now?  No.  I have tried to “set my house in order,” to use the biblical phrase, I just want to enjoy it awhile longer.  Is this because I love this world too much, I don’t love heaven enough, or both?  Probably the third option is closest to the mark.  I have grown to more deeply appreciate the Apostle Paul when he wrote, “I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better; nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful for you” (Philippians 1:23).  While I long for that level of spiritual maturity, I know I am still far short of it.

When I told my deacons that I would have to resign, I said I was praying the Lord would give me a Sabbath.  At that point I was sixty years old and wanted to have some time, perhaps a decade, to rest from my labor, reflect on God’s goodness to me, and reassure my family of how much I love them. 

Bits and pieces of all of this flitted through my mind as Wayne called on me for a closing word of prayer.  So, what did I say?  “Lord, help us to live here with an anticipation of what we will have there.”  That is what I am trying to do.  What about you?