“Death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart"
Ecclesiastes 7:2.
“Precious in the sight of the LORD
Is the death of His saints.”
Psalm 116:15
“For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
Philippians 1:21
"Resolved that I will live so, as I wish I'd done when I come to die. "
Jonathan Edwards
“My remnant of days I spend to his praise who died the whole world to redeem; be they many or few, my days are his due, and they all are devoted to him.”
John Wesley-Journal-June 28, 1787
His name was William Borden. Born into a well-known and prominent wealthy family, he attended Princeton Seminary and graduated from Yale. From childhood he had prayed that the will of God be done in his life. He wrote as a child “I want to be an honest man when I grow up, a true, loving, kind, and faithful man.” As a young teenager his travels around the world challenged him with the needs of men for Jesus Christ, especially the Muslim people in Kansu, China. So he purposed his life to make his choices count towards that goal. While training for a life of serving Christ in China, his heart and labor went out in practical ways to serve the poor, widows, orphans, and cripples in the back streets of where he was living in Chicago.
Borden constantly sought to win his classmates at Yale for Christ and His service. In 1913 he arrived in Egypt in order to hone his skills at Arabic and to continue studying Mandarin Chinese. While there he continued loving people, helping those in need, and sharing Christ. Tragically, after only being in Cairo for a few months he contracted cerebral meningitis. While suffering, he reflected the doctor missionary Adam McCall who was the first missionary to die in Central Africa and who had suffered from a similar fate as William had. Borden prayed, “Thou knowest the circumstances, Lord. Do as Thou pleasest, I have nothing to say. I am not dissatisfied that you are about to take me away. Why should I be? I gave myself body, mind, and spirit to Thee-consecrated my whole life and being to Thy service. And now if it pleases Thee to take me instead of the work I would have done for Thee, what is that to me? Thy will be done. ”
Fifteen days after contracting that terrible disease, William Borden died at the age of twenty five, before ever arriving to the place of his calling, Kansu. A few weeks before he died his mother wrote him this poem that was found in his possession on his deathbed:
“Just as I am, Thine own to be, Friend of the young, who lovest me, to consecrate myself to Thee, Oh Jesus Christ, I come. In the glad morning of my day, my life to give, and my vows to pay, with no reserve and no delay, with all my heart I come. I would live forever in the light, I would work forever for the right, I would serve Thee with all my might. Therefore to thee I come. Just as I am, young, strong, and free, to be the best that I can be for truth and righteousness and Thee. Lord of my life, I come.”
Was William Borden’s death a tragedy? Should a life driven by one great passion, namely, to be spent in service for Jesus Christ, be considered a waste? What about the seemingly premature deaths of David Brainerd (29 years.), Keith Green (28 years.), Robert Murray McCheyne (29 years.), Henry Martyn (31 years.), Henry Scougal (26years.), or Jim Elliot (25 years.)? Were these tragedies? No, these were not tragedies, these were a glory!
There is a kind of death that has no glory to it, only tragedy. My dear little brother Kip, died in a motorcycle accident while under the influence of alcohol. There was no glory to my poor young brother's death, only sorrow and grief for my family and for me a deep sense of a wasted life. Death is always a tragedy when we live this life without honoring Christ. But a life that honors Christ will lead to a glorious death.
Recently Christianity Today reported that in Muslim Turkey on April 18th German missionary Tilmann Geske, Pastor Necati Aydin, a convert from Islam, and and convert Ugur Yuksel were tortured and brutally murdered by having their throats slit by their Muslim captors. Was that a tragedy or a glory?
In your mind's eye, see yourself going to the funeral of a loved one. Picture yourself driving to the funeral parlor or chapel, parking the car, and getting out. As you walk inside the building, you notice the flowers, the soft organ music. You see the faces of friends and family you pass along the way; you feel the shared sorrow of losing, the joy of having known, that radiates from the hearts of the people there.
As you walk down to the front of the room and look inside the casket, you suddenly come face to face with yourself. This is your funeral, three years from today and these people have come to honor you, to express feelings of love and appreciation for your life.
As you take a seat and wait for the services to begin, you look at the program in your hand. There are to be four speakers. The first 'is from your family, immediate and also extended-children, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents who have come from all over the country to attend. The second speaker is one of your friends, someone who can give a sense of what you were as a person. The third speaker is from your work or profession. And the fourth is from your church or some community organization where you've been involved in service. The fifth is from your Pastor. Now think deeply. What would you like each of these speakers to say about you and your life? What kind of husband, wife, father, or mother would you like their words to reflect? What kind of son or daughter or cousin? What kind of friend? What kind of working associate?
What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember? Look carefully at the people around you. What difference would you like to have made in their lives? Then I want to have you imagine you are in the presence of God in heaven. What would He have to say about you?
Listen to the insight God gave to Moses. Standing on the shores of the Jordan River, Moses looks over the Promised Land and cries “LORD, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am.” Psalm 39:4 says, “Lord teach us to number our days!” “Let me be aware of the limitations of my life. Let me have a outlook on my death and my life.
Moses paints a picture of life being like a book. Each day is a new page. Each night another page is turned. We don’t know when the final page will be turned.
“You turn men back to dust,saying, "Return to dust, O sons of men." For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by,or like a watch in the night. You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they are like the new grass of the morning though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered. ..The length of our days is seventy years--or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow,for they quickly pass, and we fly away. ..Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
Psalm 90:3-6,10,12
In spite of the prevalence of death, we prefer not to talk about it. Most of us recognize that we will eventually die, but this recognition is reserved for a distant event decades from now, not today, not this week, not this month, not this year. Death is a foreigner, not a close neighbor.
William Law wrote that the living world's brilliance blinds us from eternity and the reality of death. “The health of our bodies, the passions of our minds, the noise and hurry and pleasures and business of the world, lead us on with eyes that see not and ears that hear not.”
To be continued...
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