Still Waiting for a Christian Death

As the year ends, my father still awaits the Lord's call. His pulse and blood pressure are now so low, the hospice nurses say that the end could come at any time. But so far, it hasn't.

I was thinking last night about how there are two very distinct phases to all this.

Right now, we are all united in praying that Christ will soon lead my father into His kingdom.

And yet, when all is finished, we will all miss him and wish that he were here. Dad is 57, and so given modern average life expectancy, we will have lost him 20 years early. That's hard by any stretch, and Dad is in many ways the lynch pin of the family. Dinner was always much quieter on nights when he was working late -- not because he did all the talking, but because everyone talked more when he was there.

In the months and years to come, that is what we'll miss -- and wish that cancer had never reared its ugly head, or that the remissions had lasted longer. Yet in the meantime, we pray that it will all be over soon, and God will call him to eternal peace.