THE DYING THING

By Rev. David Hind

 David is now the minister of Trinity Church Leicester and his articles have been greatly appreciated. 

On 27th September 2002 Susan and I entertained our next-door neighbour and five of her friends to dinner. They are all over seventy and when they arrived the room was filled with the smell of lovely perfume. I had not realised that they were all widows and during the meal I asked them what the challenges of living alone were. During the next hour we listened to an immensely moving and challenging conversation. They said that if you have loved and lived with someone for over forty years it is the simple things you miss: the small talk, the reflections on the day, the knowledge that they are there, and the sharing of things together. They spoke of aftershave kept, a husband’s toothbrush still next to the basin and of a dressing gown still hanging on a peg. One talked of trimming a rose bush in the garden and finding a string tied around the bush – ‘I couldn’t bring myself to untie it because I knew my husband’s hands had tied it’. They talked without regret and with huge fondness for men they had loved and who had died. 

In the film Jack and Sarah, a husband describes the devastation of losing his young wife: Then it hits you - you remember - and simple things, like the book she was reading, terrify you, because … she’s gone and that’s that.” 

As I write this I am thirty-nine years old. I don’t want to die yet and believe that I have many years ahead of me. However, I am ready to die. I wrote a song to be sung at my own funeral that captured all I would want to say to those I love. It seems unfair that we can’t speak at the celebration of our own life. 

I’m not here               So cry your tears

But don’t pray for me any more        What I believed         Built my life on                 Now I know it’s true 

Run the race               Keep the faith

Live your life with passion        And I’ll be there         To cheer you home                When your day comes 

My eyes have seen      My ears have heard       My mind now understands          What God prepares for those He loves       Please believe me, it’s wonderful 

Run the Race…          

 What I have longed for            All my life   To hear Him say, “Well done.”     

 Listen now, I’ve heard His voice and everything I’ve ever done, everything I’ve ever known                        Has paled into shadow 

Keep running                Keep believing              Keep looking             

There’s something far better ahead   

So this dying thlng . . . . 

·  We will all die  We cannot stop the process of life. We all get older and everyone dies 

       ·   We will all live forever  Everyone will exist beyond this life. The invitation of Jesus is to spend eternity with Him. 

      ·   We don’t need to be afraid  The Christian may not be spared from pain, but they can be spared from the fear of death. 

      ·   For the Christian death is the gateway into better things 

C.S. Lewis writes in The Last Battle, ‘All their life in this world and all their adventures in Namia had only been the cover and the title page. Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the greatest story which no one on earth had read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than before’.

¹ Note  1. C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle (Chronicles of Narnia), Harpercoflins, 2005.