After a relatively short bout with cancer my grandmother died this morning at 3:40 am. That sounds kind of harsh, I know, but I’ve never really liked euphemisms. Obviously I’ve been thinking a lot about death but, surprisingly, I’ve actually found myself thinking more about life. Perhaps it puts your life in perspective to see someone close to you die. I know every time that I went to see her while she was in the hospital and in hospice I walked out living life a little bit more than when I had gone in. It may be cliché, but seeing someone close to you die really does put things in perspective.
Speaking of cliché, there sure are a lot of clichés surrounding death. At the heart of “she’s in a better place” and “I’m glad she didn’t suffer too much,” there is truth, but I think we too often get stuck on just the superficial.
Justin and I were talking awhile back about war metaphor. Ever noticed that? Among other things, when someone is sick we always use phrases like “she’s battling cancer” or “she fought the good fight.” When I had cancer I remember saying things like “I’m going to beat this.” I remember getting myself pumped up before going into chemotherapy or radiation by listening to hardcore music and getting angry at the disease that I was determined to conquer. As a graphic designer, I’ve been openly exposed to the power of these kind of metaphors. Metaphors force us to think about things differently. In this case, with the war metaphor, I think it has really warped our thinking about death. Especially if you’re a Christian, death shouldn’t ever be seen as something that we fight against until inevitably it drags us away victorious.
One of the coolest thoughts that I’ve had in all of this stuff with my grandmother is that for those of us who live in Christ, death is a triumphant and overwhelming victory over sin and evil. Once and for all, two-thousand years ago, God “conquered” death for us through Jesus. There’s no need to fight. Everything—
everything—is held in the palm of God’s hand, including (and especially) death. As frightening and as mysterious as it is, death is not beyond His control. When we die, we die to a messed up and sick world. We get to leave all that stuff behind. Death has no sting because we’re—*cliché alert*—going to a better place. I love the Message translation of Philipians 1:21. Paul says, “Alive, I'm Christ's messenger; dead, I'm his bounty. Life versus even more life! I can't lose.”
I like to think that at my grandmother’s memorial service on Saturday that she’ll be there looking down on us, proud to see the impact she’s had on so many people. But I don’t think she will be. At 3:40 this morning, she walked into the perfect, unfiltered, ever-consuming, indescribable presence of God. I truly believe that all she will be able to do for the rest of eternity is fall down at the feet of God and worship and worship and worship. And I know it’s sort of hard for me to understand, but she will be completely and utterly whole and satisfied with this. I think that the reason that we know so little about death is that if we knew what the heaven was going to be like, we’d be literally slitting our wrists to get there. Death shouldn’t be a battle. It’s a passage. It’s a change. And when we don’t know all the specifics, that change can freak us out and we go into fight mode. But for those of us who live in the grace of Christ, death has no victory. Because there’s nothing to win. The war was won long ago. And it was won by a Being who has compassion on our pitiful, messed up souls and allows us to cheat death with Him for the rest of eternity.