More random thoughts on my journey following the death of my wife, Renee.

My alarm clock went off Sunday morning.  We’ll get back to this in a minute.

For any of you who have been following along, you know that over the last three months or so, there have been a number of references to the Old Testament Book of Job in these articles.  It is not, I assure you, because I am trying to equate myself with old Job.  Few would be so foolish.  You can’t get past the first verse of the story before you realize he is out of our league.  “Blameless” is the first word used to describe him.  That, alone, should be where all comparisons end.  And still more superlatives are written of him in that first chapter until finally, in verse 8, God Himself proudly says this of Job: “There is no one on earth like him.”

So no, I am not Job.  Not even close.  But it is with regard to the unexpectedness, the suddenness of the disasters that befell Job, and in his questions, that I am finding some similarity to, and even some solidarity with that saint.

By now, I ought to be used to, and even prepared for sudden and unexpected disasters.  In the two or three years preceding Renee’s death, I had written at least two, maybe even three or four separate articles dealing with sudden emergencies or accidents, or near-misses from accidents, any of which could have resulted in unexpected death.  The verses in the Book of James which speak of life as being a vapor featured prominently in those articles.  I thought I was doing the right things to dispel from my mind the idea that we humans have any control whatsoever over when we will take our last breath.  I thought I was doing well with getting my mind wrapped around the truths that life is fragile, and tomorrow is not promised. 

 And, I thought I was doing a pretty good job at passing along all of that knowledge, that learning, that wisdom to anyone who might be following along. 

But here’s the word that kept coming up at the time of Renee’s death – “shock”.  Shock in all its forms – “We’re in shock”, “This is so shocking”, “I was shocked to hear the news”.  And then, at my brother Mack’s funeral last week, there I, and everybody else was again.  We were “shocked”.  Once again, it was so sudden, so without warning, so unexpected, so “shocking”.

And worse for me.  No, not because it was the second sudden, unexpected, “shocking” loss this year [actually, “yes” because of that], but also worse for me because I realized that I had failed to absorb the lessons I had been trying to get others to learn.  I should not have been “shocked”.  This was, once again, in real life, in real time, the deep wisdom of The Bible on display, proof of the uncertainty of life being demonstrated, Scriptural wisdom that I had been teaching playing out before our eyes.  And yet, I was “shocked”.  In the words of Harry Chapin in his song, “Taxi” – “The lesson hadn’t gone too far.”   

Luke 4:23 also comes to mind: “Surely you will quote this proverb to me, ‘Physician, heal yourself.’”  Yes, there is much healing that needs to be done before I can again presume to be a teacher.

Actually, another proverb is appropriate here.  And if we have had a hard time grasping the deep wisdom that God, through The Bible, urges us to grasp, maybe this will come easier.  The proverb is: “Carpe Diem”.  As all of us who have seen the Robin Williams movie, “Dead Poet’s Society”, recall, this is a Latin proverb which translates into English as “seize the day”.  It’s a good message.  It implies that this day is all you have, so use it as best you can - there might not be a tomorrow.  In that sense, it is much like the Biblical wisdom surrounding the uncertainty of life.

In a strange twist to the story of the death of my brother, it turns out that this little Latin proverb was the motto of his life.  All of his students knew it, all of his fellow teachers knew it, all of his friends knew it, all of his family knew it.  And it wasn’t just something he liked to say, something that he liked to end his classes and his chapel devotionals and his announcements with.  This phrase was how he lived his life.  Not that he “carpe diem”-ed each day in a “got to see and do it all” kind of way which leaves one exhausted from constantly pursuing “the next big thing”.  Instead, he saw each day as a wonderful gift from God which filled him to overflowing with joy.  And he truly made the most of each day, “seized” each day, by making sure the people he encountered knew they were loved, and that they were respected, and that he was expecting great things from them - not that he expected everyone to become President, but that he just knew they would do their very best in every endeavor, and that he was cheering for them.  In that way, each day for him was an opportunity to make someone else’s day.  And as I heard over and over and over as I greeted the hundreds who came through the receiving line before the funeral - his friends, his students, and his fellow teachers all loved him for doing this very thing for them.   

So, while all of us were “shocked” at my brother’s sudden death, I think, in some way, he was probably the only one who was not shocked at all.  As far as we can tell, he died in a moment.  Even he had no warning - one moment he was in this world, and the next moment he was in the arms of Jesus.  But because he had lived a life dedicated to The Lord, and because he had lived a “Carpe Diem” life [which, I think, in his mind, he saw as “SEIZE THE DAY!”], he lived knowing that tomorrow is not promised, he lived the lessons and Biblical wisdom that I still struggle to accept.  And so he closed his eyes on this world, and opened them to a new and glorious reality without any shock, but with a resounding “YES!”

That sounds like a good way to live.  That sounds like a good way to die.    

Oh yes, the alarm clock story that started all of this.  After my alarm clock went off Sunday morning, I got up and went about my day.  I didn’t look at it again until I crawled back into bed late that night.  That’s when I noticed that the clock had stopped at the moment the alarm was silenced.  The battery had died at that exact moment.  There had been no warning.  The clock was, from all outward appearances, perfectly fine one moment, and dead the next.

Shocking?

Ambrose Ramsey | Pastor and Shepherd