A week ago yesterday I was called to the hospital where a thirty-two year old mother of three children had died in her sleep. She was a sepcial part of our church family and a special friend to me. We had spent time together on many occasions visiting about her life and more than once we had prayed over the telephone for the migraine headaches that haunted her. In the past year her husband survived brain surgery and we walked together through that crisis with her family as well.
As I stood with this young woman's mother, she grieved quietly by saying, "Mothers are not made to bury their daughters..."
As I visited with her husband, her sisters, her extended family and many of her closest friends, I was struck by the fact that when a young person dies we are "gifted" with a sharpened sense of our mortality.
Six hudnred people filled our sanctuary and the local mortician commented to me that this was one of the largest funerals in our small county...because the news of a young life interrupted in full bloom has such impact.
As I have listened over the past days I have heard young people and older folks alike say to me in many different ways the same thing--"We need to be more serious about our relationship to God because we don't know what time any of us could be called home..."
When a young person dies, reminded of my mortality, I am also reminded of my hope in Christ. Ii is enough to make me think about living every day as if it could be my last...and rejoicing about what lies ahead in Christ.
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