"NOW I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP"

Once again, it's the week before surgery. This Friday morning, once again, I'll be wheeled down the surprisingly chilly hallways of the surgical wing of University Hospital and through the metal doors of one of the Operating Rooms, and once again will be the only one in the room not working that day, the only one not standing up, the only one not wearing a mask and then the only one being put to sleep.

"Being put to sleep" is sort of a daunting phrase for me, but that's because of my boyhood interest in becoming a veterinarian. Ever since I was a boy, I have known that "being put to sleep" is what can happen to you if you are an old dog or a horse with a broken leg. Being neither, I am only daunted a little. At the same time, the phrase intrigues me and that's because of the number of times in the New Testament that followers of Christ who have died are described as being "asleep," specifically "asleep in Jesus." [e.g. Acts 7:60]

This brings me back to an idea that I referred to in a previous post. On August 7, I wrote about death losing its sting and that "even the sting of separation from my loved ones is gone." And then I wrote, "Well, sort of. But that's a topic for another day." Today, two days before I am once again being put to sleep, "another day" has arrived and I return to the delicate topic of "separation from my loved ones."

What I am posting here, I owe entirely to the man who taught me to take the Bible seriously. His name was Arthur C. Custance, and in 1970, when I was fifteen years old, he retired, moved to Brockville and began attending the church that my family belonged to. And he wrote. As a recently-retired scientist and as a life-long student of the Bible, he had lots to write about. And what he wrote is yours to read online. At www.custance.org, many of his titles have been reprinted and are available for purchase as books or as PDF files -- and almost all of them are printed online, free for the reading.

In his book Journey Out of Time, Dr. Custance writes, as a scientist, of the mysterious relationship between space and time, leaning heavily on Einstein's theory of relativity. In the same book he writes, as a Bible student, about being "asleep in Jesus" and about being "raised on the last day," as Jesus repeatedly mentions in John 6:39,40,44,54. I strongly recommend that you treat yourself to this book, or at least to reading it for yourself online, but in a nutshell, what Dr. Custance explains is that, when in physical death we exit the three dimensions of space: length, width and depth, we also exit the fourth dimension: time -- and by God's own power, we are transported out of space and out of time to the world's "last day." Then and there, the apostle Paul explains, "the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality." (1 Corinthians 15:52,53 ESV). This explains why those Christians who have died are described as being (from our perspective) "asleep in Jesus." And why the thief on the cross heard Jesus say, "This day you will be with me in Paradise." He heard those words just before he experienced a journey out of time.

According to this view of things, this is what Paul was writing about to the Thessalonians. "But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words." (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 ESV)

If Dr. Custance is pointing us in the right direction here, and I for one believe that he is, then the upshot is that, while the loved ones of a person who has "fallen asleep in Jesus" DO experience a separation from the "dearly departed," that separation is NOT experienced by the "dearly departed" himself, for he (or she) has journeyed out of this TIME as well as this PLACE in order to be, physically, "with the Lord." To the people he leaves behind, he is, for the time being, "asleep." But in his own experience, he finds himself, "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," being raised from the dead. But that great event will happen, as Jesus explained, at "the Last Day": that great, great day when all those who have truly entrusted themselves to Jesus Christ are transformed into Christ's `imperishable, glorious, powerful and spiritual' likeness. (1 Corinthians 15:42-44 ESV)

When Paul the apostle calls the Thessalonians to "encourage one another with these words," he has several encouraging truths in mind: that all who believe in Jesus will eventually "always be with the Lord;" that all of us who believe in Christ will, on that day, be reunited with one another; AND that when a follower of Christ dies, although those he leaves behind WILL experience the grief of being separated from him, he himself will not. For all three of these reasons, those who ARE left to grieve ought not to do so in the way that "others do who have no hope."

Lots of reason for hope here! And lots to think (and read) about, but I've been thinking about someday being "asleep in Jesus" and about this "journey out of time" since I was 16 years old. And I will be thinking about it again this Friday morning as I am (just for four or five hours, they say) being put to sleep.

LOUSY ODDS AND AN EVEN HEARTBEAT

That charming stereotype we call "the Optimist" has sometimes been differentiated from his gloomy counterpart "the Pessimist" by his (or her) description of a glass of water that is, in fact, both half-full and half-empty. At last week's meeting with my oncologist, the good doctor told me that whereas, back in May, my chances of surviving this cancer were in his opinion very bleak, he now upgrades my odds of survival to a solid 20%. Committed as I am to the Optimist's cheerful outlook, I can now say that my particular glass of water is apparently one-fifth full.

John Piper says "you will waste your cancer if you seek comfort from your odds rather than from God." He wrote this, just before his surgery for prostate cancer, in an excellent little article he entitled "Don't Waste Your Cancer" (which you can easily find by searching here) The fine print explains, "The design of God in your cancer is not to train you in the rationalistic, human calculation of odds. The world gets comfort from their odds. Not Christians … The aim of God in your cancer (among a thousand other good things) is to knock props out from under our hearts so that we rely utterly on him."

For this powerful piece of writing, I thank John Piper. And I think that his references to "the design of God" and "the aim of God" and "a thousand other good things" add up to a very important truth. As the Bible makes clear, the life of a human being is not, in fact, a thing of uncertain duration. That long-suffering, non-optimistic Old Testament man named Job was clear on this. He says to God, "Man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble … his days are determined, and the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass…" (Job 14:1-5 ESV) And King David was on the same page. He writes "… in your book were written the days that were formed for me, every one of them, when as yet there was none of them." (Psalm 139:16 ESV [except that I rearranged the phrases for the sake of clarity] )

The point here is plain, I think. Every human life is long enough to accommodate every one of the good and pleasant things AND every one of the good but "full of trouble" things that God means THAT particular human being to experience. Life is always long enough for the purposes of God. Every human life, including mine.

So while some medically-knowledgeable people are giving me a 20% chance of being alive in a year or two, it will always remain a 100% certainty that I will live on in this world, in some state of sickness or of health, until every one of "the days that were formed for me" and my entire "number of months" have been lived, and until all of the designs and aims of God have been accomplished, and until "a thousand other good things" have been realized.

So there it is. I am a man with lousy odds, and they are against me. In fact, my odds are not even "even." But by God's great grace, against all odds, I am maintaining an even keel. And clothed with the righteousness of Christ, I am at peace, being assured by the Word of God that I will one day stand before my Judge and Maker with a 100% approval rating.

And the Word of God teaches me what to say: "Praise the Lord! Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments … He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. His heart is steady; he will not be afraid until he looks in triumph on his adversaries." (Psalm 112:1,6-8 ESV)

READINESS

Two weeks from today, I will once again be the Special Guest at a meeting to be held in my honour in one of University Hospital's Operating Rooms. This will be my third surgery (Lifetime), with the great likelihood of two more surgeries to follow in the months to come.

This one being fourteen days from today, the words of England's 18th-century "Man of Letters" Samuel Johnson come to mind. "Depend upon it, Sir," he once said, "when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." Although I've never been threatened with hanging, I AM finding that the same principle applies to gut-wrenching-surgery-deemed-necessary-because-of-a-serious-case-of-cancer. These days, I'm finding that my mind is being wonderfully concentrated, and that the advantage has everything to do with becoming ready for the inevitable.

It's just what Hamlet said, as he was trying to decide whether to be or not to be: "If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all." (Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2.) While I don't suppose that Shakespeare's Hamlet should be anyone's final authority on these matters of life and death, even if "the readiness" is NOT all, nevertheless attaining (and maintaining) such a genuine state of readiness IS a goal with a lot going for it.

The thing is, cancer patients aren't the only ones who are mortal. Dying may never be something a person looks forward to, but there is a perfectly good reason for every one of us to look ahead to it. "It is appointed for man to die once…"

These days, I'm working on staying clear on the sobering fact that if I DO manage, by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, to beat the odds, so that, in September 2018 (that is, five years from now), I am declared "Cancer-Free," I'll still be a guy who is going to die someday. "If it be not now, yet it will come." And of course, sometime, anytime, before my cancer gets around to doing to me what it is all set up to do, I could get run over by a cement truck or struck by lightning.

The writer of the Old Testament's Book of Ecclesiastes stated it plainly. "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die… " (3:1,2 ESV). Day to day, one of the distinct advantages of this sort of readiness is the capacity to see every day, every hour, in fact every moment of every day, as a specific gift of God: one gift in a finite set of such gifts -- and so one not to be wasted. It seems to me that it really does help to be very clear about the fact that one day, one such moment will be the last one I get. And having no real clue about the exact date and time is no good excuse for putting the whole matter out of our minds.

So let us take a tip from Samuel Johnson, and concentrate. Wonderfully.