Over the last several days our lives have been a bit crazy. It started with a few crazy hours in my wife's life on Thursday. During the course of 90 minutes Kasey was bombarded with tough news. First, we found out that one of our good friends' babies has a large amount of fluid on the brain at 20 weeks into the pregnancy. The prognosis was not good. We are praying. Then she got word that her maternal grandmother had a catastrophic stroke and it looked like a severe situation. Next, Kasey helped paramedics assist our next door neighbor who himself had a stroke - this turned out to be minor. Hours have now turned to days.
Over the weekend I traveled to Virginia to preach and teach four messages with a group of college athletes from the Mid Atlantic region. It was a great weekend extending the hope of the gospel - the imminence of eternity fresh on my mind. Kasey remained with our kids and in close contact with her family who were closely monitoring her grandmother's condition. Over the course of the last three days, her condition has shown extreme damage to the brain and it looks like she will not recover. We are now waiting for news of her grandmother's passing. Tomorrow I will put my wife and Tommy on a plane and take the mantle of leading our girls for a few days. Kasey will spend time with her parents and other family to be there when her grandmother dies. We are so thankful that Mamaw's deepest trust is in Christ her savior who will shortly escort her home.
I believe death makes all people pause and think about what is going on under the sun. It is a shrill breaking into the everyday where we go about our business as if life will rotate on forever for us. Mortality beckons and speaks to us to wrestle with life, turn the soul towards God, hope towards the future, and remember the urgency of the mission to which we have been called. There is nothing as normal as death - while at the same time there is nothing as foreign to life. It indeed is a great enemy, an abnormal encroacher on what we know to be good - life. The final enemy has been defeated - even the sting of death is different for those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. So tonight I am ever convinced of the importance of the gospel - and our call to extend it into our worlds.
I would not have desired to be doing anything other than what I was able to do this weekend. Share the majestic living Christ with the coming generation - and now there is no other place I would rather be than home. To love my family and send Kasey out to her loved ones. And I pray that we all join Mamaw some day in that celestial city - which one day will come down when the earth is recreated anew. The day when the Kingdom invades this earth with fullness and finality. Then creation will be set free from this bondage to sin, death and decay and will will revel and bask in the glory of our great King.