NEVER SURE

In a post on April 28, 2010 ["Walking through graveyards"], I wrote: "It's been two weeks since, in the launch of a short sermon series, I talked for a bit about walking in 'my' graveyard." That was 3 1/2 years ago, and since then, not to put too fine a point on it, Death has twice come "knock, knock, knocking on my door" and I am more convinced now than I was then that "being clear on the fact of my own mortality increases my sense of the value of a day." Christmas Day, for example: now less than three weeks away.

This Christmas Day will be the 40th that Deb and I have experienced together. A big round biblical number. As we've been working our way through our preparations for this particular edition of the Big Day, the unspoken (but not always unspoken!) awareness we share is that this Christmas Day actually might be our last. The reality is: if this cancer of mine IS going to win this war, it's likely do so in 2014.

And how does this startling possibility affect this year's Christmas? What I am finding is that, to varying degrees, the possibility makes every piece of Christmas preparation and celebration taste sweeter. At least, it's the sweetness of each Christmas thing that I'm noticing. As usual, we bought a Christmas tree. As usual, we arranged with our next-door neighbour to help us carry it into the house and stand it up in the usual place. (We always buy a tall and therefore heavy tree.) With the usual decorations, we decorated the tree and the room in which the tree always stands. And every December day, I pour the tree a large jug of water. And this Christmas, what I am noticing is that every celebrational step we take has a sweetness to it. Not a new sort of sweetness. Not even a new amount of sweetness. I'm just noticing the sweetness more.

My 3 1/2 year old "graveyard" post included the famous words of the 17th century preacher Richard Baxter. "I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men." I first came across this sentence 3 1/2 decades ago, long before any life-and-death health problems began to knock, but it has ever since been a good guide to me, strongly encouraging me to see any and every opportunity to preach as a not-to-be-wasted-because-quite-possibly-my-last-such-opportunity, and also quite-possibly-the-last-sermon-that-someone-in-the-audience-will-listen-to. I have found that being again and again reminded of my mortality, the mortality common to us all, has always been worthwhile, and has never soured but always sweetened the experience of standing before a group of people as the preacher. This Christmas, the same thinking is having the same sweetening effect on every traditional and celebrational move I make.

We human beings are fragile creatures. People are struck down unexpectedly every day of the year, sometimes in the most unlikely and least predictable way. The same 2010 blog post also included a reference to one of the "resolutions" of Jonathan Edwards, written in 1722 at the age of 19! "RESOLVED: To live with all my might while I do live."

The sobering fact is, this Christmas might be anyone's last. So let us all prepare for this year's Christmas with all our might, being careful to notice and to taste and to treasure the sweetness of every detail. And let us once again celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Ruler of the kings of the earth, as never sure to celebrate it again.