Monday, April 07, 2008

This thing that I do is strange business.

 

I work with people, praying for them, teaching them, helping them along towards the cross as much as they are willing to go. Then I pray for them some more.

I meet with them at their home or work. I know their kids and have seen all the pictures of all the grandchildren. I have heard their stories of how they cleared the land when they were young, again and again.

I have drank their weak tea and eaten their four years past date cookies that they have offered me in a spirit of hospitality and care. I have pet their shedding cats and their loud "jump up to lick my face" dogs.

We have shared life for ten years or more, shared our stories and faith.

And then, just when we've become occasionally more and sometimes less than friends, they go and die.

 

This is indeed a strange work that I do where my friends end up dying, the people I work with are dying, as are the people in the church I attend.

I don't know if that makes sense to you, but it just kinda dawned on me today when I left the hospital. These people I care about and help and pray for and who have become my work and friends and church, are all headed through the same door marked death. Some now, and some later.

What a gyp. 

Somehow, my work and church and many friendships have integrated into the same group of people. And that group of people is getting smaller.

 

This thing that I do is strange business indeed.

 

 

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5 comments:

  1. Yes

    but you know you will get to see them again someday.

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  2. And the longer you do it, the stranger it gets....guess we just have to hang to the fact that there is holy mystery as well as discomfort in the strangeness.

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  3. The neighbors in our condo wondered why they didn't see us much when we lived there. I didn't want to get close because they regularly reduced in number as well.

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  4. I've come to the conclusion that death is a natural part of this age we're at. It takes a few of our peers, but mostly those we got to know as mature Christians when we were in our late teens and early 20s, our parents and their generation. Most of the time it's not bad: just very occasionally is it spiteful or comes with a cruel twist.

    I wonder why we must be affected so strongly by it, since it's as normal as taxes, and for those that love Jesus, so much better.

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