Contemplating Death and Life

In 2005, doctors told me that I likely had ten years until I started experiencing symptoms of liver failure due to a rare disease where the bile ducts develop scar tissue and become blocked (primary sclerosing cholangitis).  Over the last year or two, I have had short seasons of symptoms that set me back from ‘normal’ life, but most of the time, I don’t think about it much because I feel well.  God knows the number of my days, not the doctors.

At the anniversary of my grandfather’s passing on to the other side, I am thinking of what he is doing, how long or short it will be when I will join him there, and what the end of this journey of my own life here will look like.  I think of the brevity of life and how my story fits into the longer story of eternity.  This reminds me of the beautiful closing paragraph from the Chronicles of Narnia:

But the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

The process of death can be morbidly ugly on the outside. But on the inside, for those who enter through the narrow gate through faith in Jesus Christ, it is part of the journey to get past the introduction and into Chapter One of the Great Story.  There’s a purpose to this introduction to the Great Story. God promises He will accomplish it.  I pray that my transition from the introduction to Chapter One will be a beautiful transition that prepares me for what is to come.