In passing

The hospital corridor was cold, stark and oddly empty for eleven in the morning. As I walked towards room 504 I began thinking about what I would say to Grandma Vie. She wasn’t really my grandmother and I was actually on a pastoral visit, but to everyone in our small church she was known as Grandma Vie. 

When I found the right room I pushed on the door and let myself in. The lights were off but there was a bluish glow about the room. I noticed it was exceptionally warm in contrast to the chilly hallway I had just walked down. I was carrying my guitar and thinking about several old hymns that I might play to cheer her up.

As I came into the room all eyes became fixed upon me. They all seemed to be squinting and glaring as if I had opened the door into a movie theater. Vie was lying flat on her back surrounded by many younger women from our church. Her eyes seemed to have doubled in size as I looked at her through the coke bottle lenses that filled the frames of her glasses. She was perspiring profusely, and as a woman wiped her forehead the heart monitor began sounding like it was playing the mambo. 

 

As Vie tilted her head, straining to see who it was that had come in to see her, she angrily said “Oh it’s just him” and lay back down struggling to cling on to whatever life was left in her body. 

On another totally different day I was driving home from church, happy to get home and out of the undersized suit that was halfway suffocating me. We live out in Japatul Valley where it takes a good twenty minutes to get into town. The road is narrow and was never designed to accommodate cars, trucks and bicycles. Motorcyclists too love to speed up and down the winding road that leads to and from town.

As I approached the hair-pin turn several people motioned for me to stop. “There’s been an accident and a man is lying in the road unconscious” said one of the cyclists.  “The paramedics have been called but they are twenty minutes out” said another man who had been riding with the injured cyclist. When I said that my wife was a nurse and I was a minister they asked if we would go and pray for this man. “Don’t move him!” they all shouted in unison. 

We left our car in the middle of the road and walked up the hill to the where the man was sprawled out on the rough pavement. His bike was lying in a twisted heap of scrap metal and I’ll never forget his labored breathing and how he struggled for life and each new breath. His eyes were open but he was not responsive.

As I knelt down, I felt a bit awkward praying for someone who might not be able to hear or understand what I was saying. My wife looked at me and just shook her head he was probably bleeding internally and there was absolutely nothing we could do for him. I began to pray for him as if he could hear me, trying to give him some comfort and direction into eternity for he was in definitely in God’s hands.

Life is short. That cyclist never knew that this particular hair-pin turn was going to be the last image he would see in this life. Are you ready for eternity? Jesus warned us that a man must be born again spiritually if he wants to enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus also told the penitent thief on the cross next to him that this day, after he suffered, he would be with him in paradise. 

Before the death of Jesus on the mount where He was transfigured an eye witness account suggests that Jesus became instantly glorified. That is, that he went through a metamorphosis changing into his eternal body. His robe turned the brightest white and glistening. It was like the appearance of lighting and two men were also seen talking with Him about his imminent death. 

 

The prophet Ezekiel saw a vision of God’s throne “I saw, as it were, the appearance of fire with brightness all around. Like the appearance of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day, so was the appearance of the brightness all around it. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.” The shepherds too saw the heavens opened and the glory of the Lord shown all around them at the first advent.

So when you pass, you will have a choice, you can go in anger or with the peace that passes all understanding.