My brother-in-law died yesterday. We weren’t particularly close…well, not close at all. But still…
I have memories. It’s interesting how they come back when you’re standing in a hospital room with a grieving family whom you have known for decades. I’m especially fond of his daughters. They were so small when I met them, and now they’re amazing young women (and amazingly different from each other). So, even though I wasn’t close to their father, I grieved for them. I cried next to that bed because I was so angry with this world, not shaking my fist God saying, “Why?” but crying that God’s beautiful creation was (and is still being) so corrupted by the evil and sin of us humans. And yet we think it’s still a pretty cool place. It isn’t. I mean, I write here about the beauty I see on my bike rides, and I just got done telling you how amazing I think my nieces are, but really, there’s such a deep undercurrent of pain and disease and death in it all. Nothing stays. Nothing lasts. It all changes, and it doesn’t get any better.
And still, we sit here thinking we’re living it up.
I’ve given some thought to C. S. Lewis’s words lately, even before my brother-in-law’s passing: “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
This is our reality. We dabble about and enjoy our lives, but it will all come to an end someday, and what then can be so much better.
My last words to my brother-in-law while he was alive were “believe in Jesus.” That’s what I have for you here, but Jesus makes it even better: “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15).
He knew better than anyone. He brought it himself.