Thursday, January 19, 2017

Death or Departure...Your Choice

It was a strange dream, to say the least. In it my husband found himself in a room full of babies in incubators; born too soon, the infants were getting the extra help they needed to sustain their fragile hold on life. Odder yet was the fact that he knew the exact number of them; there were twenty-nine such apparatuses in the room. Such specificity surely indicated a message; he diligently began looking for the meaning of the dream.

What he found was that the Biblical meaning of the number twenty-nine is departure. The 29th mention of Noah's name came as he and his family were exiting the ark after the flood. Abram was leaving Sodom and Gomorrah at the 29th occurrence of his name. Jacob was moving away from his parents when his name came up for the 29th time.

So... twenty-nine babies in incubators? Premature departure.

It was hours later in the day when Jim received a call telling him that after failing suddenly over the weekend, his older sibling, Nancy, had succumbed after a long battle with Early-onset Alzheimer's Disease, a form of Alzheimer's diagnosed in patients who are still in their fifties or early sixties. The particularly cruel nature of Early-onset AD is that it strikes a person when they still have so much life yet to live. Nancy's passing was a premature departure.

And so the family gathered to grieve and say goodbye. What struck me in this instance was a reluctance on our parts to use the word death. Death speaks of an end of something...a dream, a hope, ...a life. Departure, on the other hand, indicates merely a change of state and space, a move of some sort, from one existence into another. The cessation of Nancy's bodily function here on earth to us was merely a transference of her life from confusion, pain and sickness into restored clarity, health and wholeness...albeit in another realm. Having that assurance brought peace that surpassed our grief when the moment arrived.

Such assurance is available to all. The amazing thing about the death versus departure discussion is that each of us gets to choose which word will apply to our own passing. The Bible tells us that all of us will eventually come to the end of our days here on earth. But we get to choose what happens after that. The important thing to note however is that the decision has to be made before the moment arrives. If we don't accept the offer of redemption freely extended to us by Christ, we can then expect to suffer the eternal consequences of the sin nature we were all born into.

Anyone who's boarded an airplane has heard the pilot's instruction to “prepare for departure” ahead of the moment the flight leaves the ground. And everyone born into this world has heard God's repeated instruction of the same. Don't let a premature departure preempt your decision to obey.

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live...”
(Deuteronomy 30:19 NIV)
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