A LIFE THAT IS LIVED

From My Perspective - - -

What is this world coming to? What is this world becoming? In a very significant article published in http://byfaithonline.com/a-fight-for-life/ - is the following - A Fight for Life: Belgium Removes Age Limits on Euthanasia - By Alan Dowd - March 26th, 2014. “The best parents are the ones who let their children go.” That’s certainly true when it comes to those turning-point moments in life: graduation day, moving day, wedding day. But this quote comes from a mother who’s speaking not about life, but rather about death — specifically, how she’s explained to her 10-year-old son his options for ending his life through euthanasia. “I didn’t put my children in the world for me,” she explains, as if to educate the rest of us. “It’s their life and their death.” This awful story of moral darkness masquerading as enlightened thinking comes from Belgium, which is expected this year to become the first country in the world to remove age limits on euthanasia. The Belgian senate overwhelmingly approved a bill in December that would allow state-sanctioned, medically-assisted suicide for any child, as long as he or she is diagnosed as terminally ill. Belgium’s lower house is expected to approve the bill sometime this spring. “What’s next?” asks a Belgian woman who opposes the law. “Euthanasia for people with dementia? Then for handicapped people?” Well, yes. Jan Bernheim, a Brussels-based professor of medicine and a euthanasia-for-youth advocate, matter-of-factly tells Newsweek, “The end of life with dementia is a gradual process of involution in which most attributes of personhood end up being lost. Already now, almost everywhere, such patients are not resuscitated or given antibiotics…Their blighted life is not considered deserving of the degreeof protection that is given to other human life.” Don’t skim over that last line. Read it again and let it sink in: a blighted life not deserving of the protection given to others. What a cold, clinical, care-less way to describe a masterpiece knitted together by God.”

I read this article after receiving word from a friend whose wife of many years had died this week. The words he wrote are: “My Bride Is With Jesus. She can now see and hear ‘The Lover Of Her Soul’ in person…” We were in College together in 1954 – and – I cannot begin to know the great sense of loss and the sorrow in heart being realized by our friend. However, the perspective and reality of the one who is in Christ regarding life and death is far different than that of secularists in Belgium and elsewhere who measure the value of life so differently. It is a perspective of one who has gained a relationship and understanding similar to that of the Apostle Paul who stated in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” It is joined with his expressed thought in II Corinthians 5:15, “And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”

In life, we realize the physical limitations of it. We understand that physical life is temporary. As James 4:14 indicates, “Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.” We also understand that which Moses conveyed in Psalm 90:9-12, “For all our days pass away…The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away…So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” We can think of life in terms of a journey begun and a journey completed. In this regard, words for encouragement are given in Philippians 1:6, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Also, Philippians 2:13, “…it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure..” 

The words written by Carrie E. Breck in 1898 are now a reality for my friend’s "bride": (Stanza 1) “Face to face with Christ, my Savior, Face to face—what will it be, When with rapture I behold Him, Jesus Christ Who died for me? (Stanza 3) What rejoicing in His presence, When are banished grief and pain; When the crooked ways are straightened, And the dark things shall be plain. (Refrain) Face to face I shall behold Him, Far beyond the starry sky; Face to face in all His glory, I shall see Him by and by!” Physical death may be the loss of a loved one, but that loved one who knew Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord has now entered into the full spiritual reality of eternal life. Consider these things with me.