Proclaimer Blog
Prepared for death?
Had one of "those" phone calls on Sunday afternoon to tell me that a dear saint who had served as a missionary in Brazil for 40 years had been called to glory. She was elderly, blind and is now in a place which is "better by far." She was very dear to me, so the news of her death was saddening.
I remember Don Carson addressing a small fraternal I was at a few years ago telling us that the pastor's job was to prepare people for death. There's a lot of truth in that. But I want to extend it a little. After all, we must not "grieve as the rest of mankind who have no hope" (1 Thess 5.13). I wonder if we could define a pastor's job thus: "preparing people for their death, and the death of others." For the truth is that many Christians are unprepared for death – by which I mean the death of others. We are more influenced than we care to admit about the heart struggles that we go through when a loved one dies. We don't know how to think about the future properly, nor what it means to grieve with hope.
Perhaps we need to add that to the job description? How well prepared are your people for other people's death?