As I read the email my hubby forwarded, the words restricted access popped from the computer screen. Written by the gentle, kind-hearted wife of a man lying in a hospital bed. His not long enough earthly life now down to days. And access to his hospital room has now been restricted to family only.
At the end of life, the most important in life rise to the surface. It is the most important people in life who, ideally, we would choose to pass from this life close by our side.
“Meaningless, meaningless … ” I have been hearing this a significant amount as I have sat in a grade eleven Bible class (I work in a Christian school), who has been studying the book of Ecclesiastes. “Everything is meaningless … ” Throughout the first part of this book, everything is meaningless; work, study, pleasures, power, riches.
And, the family who is gathered around the husband and father of the man in the restricted access hospital room would say, ‘amen!’
When our earthly life comes to it’s end, the things that occupied much of our life and source of existence fade away, they become as dust or smoke. Something that fades from our minds faster than life itself. Ecclesiastes 1:3 states, “what’s there to show for a lifetime of work, a lifetime of working your fingers to the bone?” Once you are passing from this life to the next, what we have accomplished on this earth becomes … meaningless.
And what becomes meaningful?
I cannot answer that for another person. I do know that I have never heard of someone’s boss, or banker, or realtor being at their bedside as they take their last breath. They are restricted from access. Who are there, are the ones who made life … meaningful.
“Life, lovely while it lasts, is soon over.
Life as we know it, precious and beautiful, ends.
The body is put back in the same ground it came from.
The spirit returns to God, who first breathed it.”
Ecclesiastes 12:6-7
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It is a song based on David’s Psalm 103. It is a song of what God has done for us. It is a ‘bedtime’ Psalm. It reminds me of kid’s picture books like Robert Munsch’s “Love you Forever” or “Guess How Much I Love You” by Sam Mc Bratney. Books that tell a child how very loved they are and how far their parent is willing to go to love them. This Psalm is the same, it tells of how desperately our Father God loves us, and how far He will go to prove it.
to become distracted when trying to hear whispers), but He seems to prefer whispering.
nitpicking.
What I really mean to say, is that at least one of our five kids at home had creepy crawlies in and on their hair. They were scratching up a storm, and feeling really buggy. Yes, that is right, a lice infestation!
awe, and commitment that a parent feels when their newborn is placed in their arms. Second is how that beautiful, innocent, miraculous bundle of joy turns into a surly, snarly, stubborn teenager.
mean to those younger than her, she has hissy fits, she leaves the house without telling anyone where she is going, and she might spend days without saying a single word to her father. Then, one day every week she goes out in public to say how much she loves her Daddy. And you know what, because her father is God, He welcomes me back … every time. Because my Father God knows I am going to be surly (it’s a given, just like our kids), but He sees in my the enormity of what I can become, and He isn’t going to give up on my until I see it too.
One year and a bit later we got the confirmation that I was pregnant again. I felt so thankful, so blessed by God, but I did not offer that baby back to Him (immediately). There have been many times, over her nineteen years, when I have been confronted about the sacrifice that I have held back from God. I have never been directly confronted by individuals, so much as confronted by my own guilt for holding back my daughter from the God who gave her to me. I would be awakened to my guilt when I was reading, or listening to a speaker, or singing a hymn or worship song (try singing “I Surrender All” when in a position of NOT surrendering).
itsawonderfilledlife 