RICHARD'S STORY

On May 16, 2014, I spent an amazing forty minutes with my friend, Richard Helphand.  I met him about a year ago, just after he had come to Christ and was baptized.  Today He is dying. He knows it.  His life is ebbing away in an assisted living facility in Glendale, California.  The doctors have given him from two weeks to two months, and assured him that they have done all they know to do.  Now they are tying to keep him comfortable.  He went into hospice care this morning.  He told me that he was ready for the future, that if God wanted to take him it would be okay, and that if God wanted to keep him here, it would be okay.  With King David of old he said, “I trust in You, O Lord, I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in Your hand” (Psalm 31:14-15).

Room 110 became a sanctuary today, an altar, where a dying man, his wife, her son, and a pastor met God.  The ordinary became the place of encounter and a monument of praise and thanksgiving to God for his mercy and grace.  In the face of imminent death we were reminded of astonishing grace as we read the words of Psalm 46, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its swelling pride” (vs. 1-3).

Life and death are all around us everyday.  Much of what happens to us and around us is beyond our control.  Powers greater than us speak, and we have no choice but to bow to them.  We can deny death, complain about it, criticize it, and even pretend that it will never come to our door, but it will; if not today, some day. We can count on it.  There are not a lot of things in life about which we can be certain; death is one of those things.  The death rate is 100 percent.  We can put off death by eating healthy and exercising appropriately.   Modern Medicine has given us ways to prolong life but truth is that none of us is going to get out of this world alive.  Better make peace with it.

As I sat with my friend and his family I couldn’t help but think about something Jesus said to Martha of Bethany in John 11.  She was grieving the loss of her brother when Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again” (John 11:23).  Martha believed Him and affirmed her faith when she said to Him, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (vs. 24).  Apparently Jesus had something more in mine because He responded back to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.  The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.  Do you believe this?” (vs. 25-26).  With that Martha responded, “Yes, Lord…I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world” (vs. 27).

In this conversation Jesus speaks of both death and life, and speaks of them so casually that they almost flow together, almost mingling the two into one.  It is as if He is saying, “Yes, you will die.  No, it isn’t the last event of your life.”   Dying and living, stamped with His resurrection image.  Death happens but it isn’t the end.  Life as we know it ends, but only for a moment.  Death speaks and life obeys.  Life speaks and death dies.  The two get lost in the greatness of the resurrected, “Son of God,” and everything gets redefined.

In room 110 death is winning the battle but it is also losing the war.  My friend’s heart is fixed on Jesus.  Hope fills the atmosphere.  Endings have taken a back seat, and new beginnings fill the room.  The Resurrection and the Life is in that room, and my friend is on His way to a future created and won by the One who is Lord of lords.  “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20). 

            Yesterday I went to room 110 again.  Richard was surrounded by his family, friends, and work associates; Fourteen of us.  All of us were saying our goodbyes.  I got to lay my hand on his head, to pray with him, and to thank him for being my friend and brother in Christ.  Tears flowed, hugs were sustained, silence was very loud.  Death was winning the battle and we all knew it.  We all also knew that death would not be the final word spoken in this room.  God was in that room and defeat was absent.  It was then I understood again that “weeping may stay for the night, 
but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). 

This was yesterday.  I just received word that my friend passed away at about 6:00 a.m. this morning.  Room 110 is very empty.  Yet, emptiness is not Lord, and I cling to a word of truth that has brought hope to countless millions through the centuries,  

… [T]he perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

“Where, O death, is your victory?


Where, O death, is your sting?”

… But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
                                     -- I Corinthians 15: 53-57

           

Room 110 is empty today because death has spoken but, with the apostle Paul of old, “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). 

What was that word?  Oh, yes, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus”