Ruth Bell Graham remembered
Just flipped through the TV channels and watched Ruth Bell Graham's memorial service. Still trying to gather my thoughts, I don't know what to say except that I'm blessed by it.
She showed us how to live through the four seasons of life in a godly way. Even as she aged, in her ailments and in her dying, she quietly inspired.
Unplanned, Billy Graham, the great evangelist of our times, stood from his seat and addressed the crowd during the memorial service. Looking frail, he lives to testify how God answers a wish that his wife shared during an interview, that in their "autumn and winter" times the last ounces of their lives would be used by God.
To learn more about her life and be blessed by it:
http://billygraham.org/RBG_TimeToAdore.asp
To read about her memorial service:
http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2007/s07060087.htm
Death and Dying
Rev. Richard White, the officiating pastor at Ruth Graham's memorial service, preached about Jesus's striking response of tears towards people's grief and of agitation/anger directed at death from John 11.
I almost forgot that I felt that kind of anger towards the ravaging power of death at dad's deathbed. As I listened to Rev. White, a cord within me was struck. I remembered the anger and still feel it. The fact that the living and the dead are cruelly separated attests to its viciousness. Despite the hope we have in Jesus, death was triumphing. Death would at least for amoment triumph in everyone of us.
Recalling the Apostle Paul's famous phrase, "Where, O death, is your sting?" (死啊, 你的毒勾在那裡?) in 1 Cor 15:55. Paul's not merely being poetic; he must have been subjected to many close-to-death occasions.
Yet Rev. White notes, "Death doesn't have the last word. Jesus does." Jesus proclaims, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me shall never die" (John 11:25). Amen.
Blog title is borrowed from 蘇恩佩's 《死亡,別狂傲》.
2 comments:
> I almost forgot that I felt that kind of anger
> towards the ravaging power of death at dad's deathbed...
> I remembered the anger and still feel it.
> The fact that the living and the dead are
> cruelly separated attests to its viciousness...
> death was triumphing.
> Death would at least for a moment triumph
> in everyone of us.
It is important for us to bear in mind all the time that it is death and not God that our anger is targeting at. Some people would mistakenly point this anger to God because they resent either God created something called death or why He is not lending a helping hand to stop it. We need to remember our death is the result of our sin. It is our choice that leads us to death. Death and hell are meant for Satan, not people, everyone of whom God desperately wants to save, or is delaying His return in order to save.
True.
This quote from Christian Times expresses how I felt when I wrote the original entry: "人應對死亡存有實在的盼望，這盼望是來自上帝的應許，但不應把死亡浪漫化，面對死亡時同時要了解這是可怕的現實。"
Seeing the aging Billy Graham in his wife's memorial service, looking at the pictures of him grieving, reading bits and pieces of the dying process of Ruth Graham's, I'm getting a better view of death and catching up with how I felt about death now.
Christ overcame death, but God hasn't destroyed death yet. Empowered by the hope that is in Him, we Christians face death and its aftermath (all consequence of our sin).
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