Death Isn't What It Used To Be
I sat on the floor, holding the small life in my hands, waiting and watching
as it passed from here to another place. It was late, sometime after
midnight. Cold and raining outside. Inside the house all the lights were
off except for a small kitchen glow. I sat in the dining room, next to the
open box that the bird had been in the day before.
A baby bird, nearly ready to fly, had tumbled out of the nest. Injured, it
had been discovered and picked up by my children. They wanted to save it.
I knew when I first saw it that it would likely not make it. But I told
them they could keep it inside where it was dry and warm.
For a day or so it behaved as though it might survive, eating and drinking
what was offered. But by the second night, it was clear that the bird would
not live. It was a week night, with school and work the next day. The
children and then my wife and I finally went to bed.
I don't remember if I got up in the night because I was thirsty, because I
needed to use the restroom, or just to check on the bird. But I walked over
to the box and looked in on it.
It was too weak to remain upright, so I got down on the floor, next to the
box, and took the little life into my hands. I didn't want it to be alone
when the time came. The breathing was fast, shallow, and uneven. I held it
close, to keep it warm, and I may have prayed.
In those days, I wasn't very close to God. I had drifted away from the
warmth of the Father's love in Jesus Christ. I still prayed about many
things, because I knew that no one can live long on the earth without God's
help and blessing. But I didn't seek to obey the Lord or to know His will
for my life.
I wanted the bird to live. I didn't want my children to face its death.
But I had little doubt that it would soon be gone. Time sifted by
unnoticed, ticking quietly away. The small life lay in my hands, breathing
and waiting. I waited with it.
Physical death is always a part of life. Some of my very earliest memories
are of facing death in various forms. When I was about three I discovered
baby kittens that had been killed by the local tom. I remember being told
when I was five of the girl my age, a few houses away, that had died from
eating poison. I remember catching snatches of news stories on the radio
reporting a woman's death.
Real death was very different to my young mind than the gunfights I saw in
TV westerns. Real death was unnaturally cold, an alien and tragic thing. I
feared it and hated it.
But after many years, sitting there as an adult, holding that small bird,
already troubled with the untimely theft of yet another life, I finally
glimpsed the other side of death. I was able to witness, in the tiniest
measure, the passage from this dark, cold earth, to a truly wonderful place.
I can still feel the radiant warmth of that heavenly dawning on my face.
I know, it sounds crazy.
Outside, the night continued cold and dark and raining. The room where I
waited and watched was still dark, with only a kitchen light making a hole
in the gloom. But the darkness was not everywhere. For as the dying bird
reached the end of its struggle, the little body moved some, and it raised
its head, opening its eyes one last time. It looked up toward the ceiling,
and then stretched out both wings to flap once or twice, as though in full
and glorious flight. It was not a shuddering spasm, as one might expect,
but focused and directed flight, even though the body was too weak to leave
my hands.
Watching, I could see that the little bird was responding to something well
beyond the ceiling of the dark room. Its gaze was fixed and it took flight
with power and ease, even as the lifeless body collapsed, resting at last.
I was there, and for a few seconds I could also see past the dark room, past
the rainy night, up into bright clouds of gold and pink and endless height,
high above all the gloom of a troubled universe, and ever beyond that, into
a bright new morning.
The passing of that little bird into a place that knows no death was so
startling that the wonder eclipsed my own dread of the bird's final moments.
I had expected to be depressed, left again with the cold reality of death.
But as it turned out, when the cold darkness of death is finished, reality
goes on, possessing something more.
Life had surprised me. Life and something more profound than mere hope
overtook the moment that death had worked so hard to claim. Death turned
out to be a passing shadow, just another fading memory of a dark world left
behind.
I had expected loss, the familiar sadness that comes when we are reminded
again that even the most innocent creatures of this world must suffer and
die. But the loss had been swallowed up in happy discovery. I had been
there, watching and waiting with the tiny bird until it passed from this
place to another. And so I had been allowed to catch the tiniest glimpse of
that other place. I had felt the warmth of that glorious dawn on my face
and in my very soul.
Hours later, the black night finally gave way to a rainy, gray sky. It was
cold, damp and gloomy outside. But the cold rain and heavy gloom of the
clouds could not break through the golden warmth that remained in my heart.
I had looked up and beyond the covering veil. I had seen the other side.
Death still comes in its myriad forms to every living creature of this
world. But it is not the final act. And it can never grip my heart again
with its cold dread. The terror of death has been taken away.
Right in the middle of human history, God sent His Messenger from heaven.
Jesus came to tell us, He said, about heavenly reality. He revealed things
that He knew about, things eternal and mysterious to us. He came as light
and life into this dark place. He portrayed for us the truth about God and
the realm beyond what we see around us.
Simply telling us, though, was not the mission of Jesus. He also opened the
way for each and every one of us. He made it possible for all of us to be
with God. He opened up the door to heaven and and eternal life, that we
might see the glory of God. Jesus became the way, the life, the very truth
of God. He came to give us wings of glory, enabling us to one day pass from
this place into that perfect dawning of God.
And so now as I perform my daily activities, I wait and I watch. I am eager
to take my flight into the golden dawn of life in eternity.
Paul wrote about his own anticipations, saying,
"...we do not lose heart. Even though our outer self is perishing, our inner
nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is
preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we
look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be
seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. For we know that if
the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a
house not made with hands -- eternal in the heavens..." (2 Corinthians
4:16-5:1)
"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? ...thanks be
to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1
Corinthians 15:55 & 57)
Jim
www.goodwordusa.org
www.jimsdesk.com
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