Christian Counseling Service -- Devotions

The purpose of death

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Genesis 22:1-2
Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!"

"Here I am," he replied.

Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."

Romans 8:31-32
He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

Psalm 116:15
The Lord cares deeply when his loved ones die (New Living Translation).

I have been listening to Ralph Stanley wail out his mournful woebegone dirge in that strangely intoxicating Coen Brothers movie, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" He sings a simple question:

O, Death Won't you spare me over til another year

And death has a disturbing answer:

The children prayed, the preacher preached
Time and mercy is out of your reach
I'll fix your feet til you cant walk
I'll lock your jaw til you cant talk
I'll close your eyes so you can't see
This very air, come and go with me
I'm death I come to take the soul
Leave the body and leave it cold
To draw up the flesh off of the frame
Dirt and worm both have a claim

God speaks a whole different language. God said to the patriarch of his chosen people: "Abraham! Take your most precious young son Isaac, fresh and sweet and full of new life, this son I promised you and finally gave you. Tie him up on the altar, pile up the wood, say a prayer, and set it all on fire. Let him die. Give him back to me."

God did not allow Abraham and Isaac to go through with it. But their willingness to walk toward the altar is pretty clear in the story. God insists on my commitment to him before my own skin, knowing this is my only path through the eye of the needle into eternity.

Death and its father Satan would have me think otherwise. Satan does what he always does, manipulating God's words till they sound accusing rather than loving. Adam and Eve chose "knowledge" over trust when Satan offered it to them. God's response was to limit the damage by limiting their physical lives. "For dust you are, and to dust you will return." And ever since, Satan has rubbed that dirt in our collective face.

Since this inauspicious beginning God has been restoring his original plan. He insists on showing me, through the principle of sacrifice, that death is not the enemy; instead it's my idolatry, my hubris, my determination to grab God's place for myself.

God never intended death to be the awful poison-pen torture that Satan twists it into. Stanley's song, drawn out against a horrifying backdrop of KKK members dancing in glee before the gallows, screams its hatred of life.

But God designed death, Satan didn't. Death's only purpose is to be the precursor to resurrection. Like the butterfly, I will give up my legs and receive my wings, no longer the worm Satan wants me to think I'll always be.

I fly free. Up in the sky the sun shines through the most beautiful colors, and they are all on me.

I call to you, Lord, "Save me!" And you are gracious and righteous and full of compassion. You protect my simple heart. When I was in great need, you saved me.

I will be at rest once more, for you have been good to me. You have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before you, O Lord, in the land of the living.

Devotions Archive

The purpose of death

Sunday, March 8, 2009