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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