Prelude To November

I used to massage my grandmother when I was fairly young. I remember crying suddenly one time  while I was massaging her and she turned to ask me why. I told her I just thought that someday she'll die and leave me, and I'll be looking back to that moment that I realized it. She just shrugged. Fast forward 10 years or so to her funeral. There I was staring down at her coffin being lowered in the ground, looking back to that moment that I realized this day back then. Now it's my turn to remind my children how fleeting life really is. When my father got deported here from Japan around 2004, the total time I got to spend with him till he died 2 years ago probably won't even add up to a month. I still have the text message I sent him on the day that he suffered the stroke that led to a three week stay at the hospital. That was the only time in my life that I held his hand as a son. God granted me that I should see him breathe his last. I always remind my children of this: that if it weren't for God's mercy, our family would have ended the same way as my wife's family or my own. Broken. Far greater than the Lord restoring our marriage, He gave us a testimony. A foundation for my children to pattern their choices from. We talk about death casually at home. It is always regarded as something to prepare for and look forward to. It is nothing morbid to us, we expect it. Praise God if he would spare us a violent death for the sake of the Gospel, but praise God as well if he doesn't. 

The good Book says, A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of one's birth. The Lord has made our earthly demise, a day so feared by the heathen, a beautiful thing to look forward to. It says, that Jesus Christ our Lord is seated at the right hand of the Father. But Stephen's final moments were so momentous that the Lord himself stood to welcome him home. Precious indeed in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.

November 1 is a major holiday in the Philippines. It is a day of remembering relatives who have succumbed to the penalty of sin: death. Once a year, millions of Filipinos flock to the cemeteries to gather with family and pray for relatives who they think are in an imaginary place called purgatory. Nothing could be farther from the truth. (Are we, as true believers, really concerned that they are so far removed from the one Person who is the Truth?) You would think this should cause us to be soberly minded, but no. We have reduced the observance of the reality of death to a mere picnic occasion. Our mouths pray. Our hearts never do. Not until Christ, anyway. This day, the world commemorates death, but I will celebrate the resurrection and the life. The people need to hear of the good news. That Christ is alive and is not only mighty to save, but more importantly, deserves the honor and glory that he righteously demands. And for this, we need to go before the Lord once again for next week's work at hand, to plead before God and stand in the gap for those who will hear, and to go and offer my beloved people this wonderful gift of reconciliation, of mercy and salvation, who is Christ the Lord.

I always make it a point to number my days. Each day I awake, for every safe turn of the wheel of the vehicle I ride in, when I arrive from work and see my house from the end of the street, when I hear my children knocking on the door from school, when I hear them laugh at home, when they kiss me goodbye before leaving, when I see my wife sleeping soundly, or when I am awakened by her early morning cries in prayer, moving about in the day, doing work, alive, when I look out to the fields in silence, I give thanks. God has been so good in giving me the Lord Jesus Christ. I have no need of anything else. I already have everything because I am his.

Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by name; thou art mine. Isaiah 43:1