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Sunday, May 11, 2008

Death of a Christian

From Execution Eve, by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Charles Pinckney Luckey of the Middlebury, Conn., Congregational Church was making his usual ministerial rounds, as usual on his motorcycle. Suddenly, rounding a corner, he lost his balance and fell.

He arrived home that mid-October day in 1974, a little bedraggled. But this didn't matter much-- he was always a conspicuously informal dresser, though never affectedly so. In fact, there was no trace of affection in him, which is one reason he was so greatly, and quietly, popular with his congregation.

What vexed Luckey was that he-- a perfect physical specimen at 50, tall and rangy and handsome, with the face of a 30-year-old and the physique of a long-distance runner-- should have lost his balance. So he went to a doctor, suspecting that he had something wrong with his ear canal. The doctor examined him, couldn't find anything, and everyone hoped that whatever it was would go away.

It didn't. Luckey began to lose his vision and, in a few weeks, was losing the motor control on his left side. By December, he was blind. A legion of specialists surveyed his wilting frame, and a name was spoken which squirts ice water among even hardened doctors. It was diagnosed as Jakob-Creutzfeldt disease, and there are few recorded cases of it. Something about a galloping degeneration of the nerve cells. The prognosis for him: up to six months. Cause? Nobody knows.

They took Charles Luckey to Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York to "confirm" the diagnosis. It was only there that he yielded to depression, when they poked about and asked him questions, to measure, scientifically, the physical and intellectual deterioration. Before and after the poking, he was obstinately cheerful and affectionate, dictating to his secretary farewell letters to his friends, letters exalted by a curious dignity that had attached to him even as a teen-ager. Then, on the Sunday before Christmas, propped up at the lectern by his 17-year-old son, he preached his last sermon to a congregation racked with pain and admiration.

The crisis came shortly after. He called his secretary and dictated a letter which he sent to a few friends, and which was pronounced by the retired, aged chaplain of Yale University "the most moving credo of the Christian faith written in my lifetime."

"What"-- Charlie dictated-- "does the Christian do when he stands over the abyss of his own death and the doctors have told him that disease is ravaging his brain and that his whole personality may be warped, twisted, changed? Then does the Christian have any right to self-destruction, especially when he knows that the changed personality may bring out some horrible beast in himself? Well, after 48 hours of self-searching and study, it comes to me that ultimately and finally the Christian has to always view lifer as a gift from God, and every precious moment of life was not earned but was given by grace, lovingly bestowed upon him by his Creator, and it is not his to pick up and smash."

And so I find the position of suicide untenable, not because I lack the courage to blow out my brains, but rather because of my deep, abiding faith in the Creator who put the brains there in the first place. And now the result is that I lie here blind on my bed and trust in the sustaining, loving power of that great Creator who knew and loved me before I was fashioned in my mother's womb. But I do not think it is wrong to pray for an early release from this diseased, ravaged carcass.

"Lovingly given," he closed the statement, diffidently, "to my congregation and to my friends if it seems in good taste."

It seems to me in very good taste, and I pass it along, with the word that at least that final prayer was answered. The coma began two weeks later, and on January 20, 1975, he died. There had been no personality change. That, all the dreadful powers of Jakob-Creutzfeldt couldn't do to Charles P. Luckey.

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A Christian View of Death

John Donne writes

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so
One short sleep past, we wake eternaly,
And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.

For the Christian physical death isn't a dread enemy. The death that Christians hold in dread is not the death of the body but the death of the soul.

I came across a letter my parents wrote in 1980. "In our last prayer letter, mention was made f the fact that Harold's sister Elsie and sister-in-law Irene were both in critical health condition. We must now report with sadness that Irene passed away January 1st and Elsie on January 4th. We are reminded that the Lord gives to each of us our appointed time and tasks and that while life is short and fleeting for all it is yet long enough to be significant, especially when lived out in the will of God."

Airline pilots have a catch-phrase where weather conditions are optimum- CUVU-- ceiling unlimited, visibility unlimited-- and that is the hope that God gives us. "Even there shall thy hand lead," says Psalms 139:10. Discovery of God's steadying hand begets quiteness and confidence for the road ahead. In the economy of God, we are needed. We can lend our strength to "whatever things are true. . . honorable . . . lovely . . . gracious . . . excellent. There is pain in the loss of those we have loved, but such persons we honor not by retiring from life but by carrying on with courage, faith, and hope.

Remind me, God, when I am lonely and perhaps I feel despair
Let not my ailing heart forget that you hear every prayer
Remind me that no matter what I do or fail to do
There is still hope for me as long as I have faith in You
Let not my eyes be blinded by some folly I commit
But help me to regret my wrongs
Inspire me to put my fears upon a hidden shelf
And in the future never to be sorry for myself
Give me the restful sleep I need before another dawn
And bless me in the morning with the courage to go on.

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Saturday, September 15, 2007

NDEs

I found this site of people who have died and came back to tell about their experience. Here is one short example

" I was watching the paramedics perform CPR on me when my glowing companion suggested I might like to go back. I asked her where I would be going back to. With that, two other beings arrived, my grandmothers, one I had never met and one who passed into spirit only 18 months previously. I knew instinctively that I would be safe whatever choice I made. I was surrounded by love. I was encompassed by warmth and a sense of belonging I've never experienced since." Leonie, age 5.

other stories at www.nderf.org/NDERF_NDEs.htm

I was wondering what you all thought of experiences like this that people tell and whether or not you thought they were valid? Does it increase your faith or make no difference to you that so many have these types of experiences?

I've had only one such experience about two decades ago, although it's unclear how close I was to death. I lost consciousness at the health club and banged my head on the floor. What people saw was somebody who moved like a half crushed beetle in a puddle of blood. What I felt was the way I feel on a Saturday morning after a long, peaceful sleep-- a feeling of deep, soft comfort and well-being. I'm sure there were neurological and physiological defense processes at work. Nevertheless, this strange episode left me with a fearlessness of death as well as a hightened awareness of the now.

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