Labor Pains

I've mentioned before my dear friend, Maggie, who has been battling a horrific form of breast cancer for well over two years now. The pain has been indescribable, I would say unbearable, but she has been, with the aid of meds, bearing it. Until last weekend. She is ready to be done with it. Her body appears to be shutting down.

It occurs to me this morning that Maggie is in the final stages of labor before her birth into real life. It has been a long and indescribably painful labor! But new life is ALWAYS worth it!! Once born she will never want to return to the dark womb of life on sinful earth. She will be free!! She will know LIFE as she has never known before! In many respects she will know life for the very first time!

And we will rejoice with her as we always rejoice over new life! But there will also be an emptiness. She will be separated from us in a way that feels just a wee bit uncomfortable, a little bit unsafe. There will be times when we miss that "movement within us" that was Maggie. But we will never truly wish her back, in the same way that we would never truly wish a newborn back into the "safety" of the womb. In the womb, although it is a SAFE place, that child will never become who he was meant to be, never fulfill his purpose. He will never experience life as it was meant to be experienced.

And we find ourselves not looking forward to the labor, a bit apprehensive about the parts we don't fully comprehend (after all, it's not like we get a lot of practice at this thing called death), but we long heavily for the birth! LIFE!!! When we "shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is"! And all the labor pains will be instantly forgotten!

I really like Randy Alcorn's thought that heaven should not be called the "after-life," but life here on earth should more accurately be called the "before-life"!

Shall I Try This Again?

Well, a lot has changed since I last attempted to blog. I have quite a bit more discretionary time, so maybe this time I'll keep at it - we'll see...

We have a dear lady in our church who has a very aggressive form of breast cancer, and apart from a miracle (which we continue to ask for), she has just a few months to live. I KNOW she will be healed, just not sure it will be in this life. That has us all thinking a great deal about death and suffering as of late. I love this depiction of a believer's death. I'm not sure who wrote it.

"I'm standing on the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She's an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and the sky come down to mingle with each other.
And then I hear someone at my side saying, 'There, she's gone.' "Gone? Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull as she was when she left my side. And just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in ME, not her.

"And just at that moment when someone at my side says, 'There, she's gone,' there are other eyes watching her coming, and there are other voices ready to take up the glad shout, 'Here she comes!'

"And that is dying."

"Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of His saints". Psalm 116:15

I want to always remember that!