"For me to live is Christ and to die is gain!"

"Dust In The Wind"

I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone
All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind

Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do, crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see

Dust in the wind, All we are is dust in the wind

Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away, all your money won't another minute buy

Dust in the wind, All we are is dust in the wind

Kerry Livgren (Kansas) 1977

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
    says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
    Everything is meaningless.

 What do people gain from all their labors
    at which they toil under the sun?
 Generations come and generations go,
    but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises and the sun sets,
    and hurries back to where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
    and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
    ever returning on its course.
All streams flow into the sea,
    yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
    there they return again.
All things are wearisome,
    more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
    nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again,
    what has been done will be done again;
    there is nothing new under the sun.
 Is there anything of which one can say,
    “Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
    it was here before our time.
 No one remembers the former generations,
    and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
    by those who follow them!"

Ecclesiastes 1-King Solomon (the Bible)
 

"For me to live is Christ and to Die is gain" the apostle Paul (the Bible)

Growing up in the 70s and 80s my generation grappled with the futility of life more than previous generations. In the 60s there was rebellion against the wisdom of age and the "establishment". There was the idea that if the younger generation only rebelled against the older generation that there would be meaning to life and the world would be a better place. "Don't trust anyone over 30" was the cry of the 60s. When in reality that generation only escalated the crisis that the world was in.

In my high school, in the early 80s, there were hard drugs openly bought and sold in class and the school motto was "party hearty, die high!" The idea was that life was just a joke anyway so we may as well enjoy it while we can. Although I never bought into this partying mentality, the hopelessness of the generation that I grew up in effected me none-the-less. I remember movies such as "The Day After" and others like it, which portrayed the complete desolation and destruction after a nuclear war.

So what did my generation do with this hopeless attitude after graduation and college? Well, the "party hearty, die high" motto gets a little old when pursuing a career, spouse and family. So we all settled down into modern American life but we still held onto the same hopeless world view. It simply transformed from partying to purchasing. "He who dies with the most toys wins!" became the new mantra of my generation. Bow down to the God of luxury because nothing matters anyway.

But what does scripture say about eternity???
One of Gary's strongest approaches to life was, "What does the Bible say?" He didn't take kindly to the modern idea of, "what it means to me is......" Gary wanted to know what scripture meant to God and those to whom the word of God was revealed. What does this scripture mean to the Holy Spirit, was a lot more important to Gary, than what does this verse mean to the guy next to him in church. Gary wanted to know God's truth and heart in the Bible, which would then determine how he and the guy next to him should respond to the absolute truth of the Word of God.

So, what does our mortality mean to God? What does scripture say about everything being meaningless? What do we do with this thing called Death when we are face to face with it's harsh realities?

These are the questions that I have been wrestling with during the past year since Gary died. In that year I have been surrounded by the aftermath of death on all sides. Being part of a very precious and Godly group of widows from across the country, I have been encompassed by people who have experienced the loss of their beloved. I have also become acutely and suddenly aware of the many other deaths around me. A friend loses a wife, a young brother is diagnosed with cancer, a child drowns, a sister innocently gets killed by a drunk driver and the list goes on and on.

In the years previous to Gary dying I did not think much about death. I went from one life and ministry adventure to another and pictured Gary being carried peacefully to his heavenly home when he was in his mid to late 90s and I was in my 80s. We even joked about the possibility of my dying first and upsetting the apple cart of expectations of him getting to go to Heaven before me because of our 18 year age difference. In these comradare filled moments, never in our wildest imaginations did we envision that death would hit our family so horrifically and so early.

In this past year I've grappled with a lot of hard questions. The human emotional response to death seems to be to just luuv everyone and express that luuv openly, "Hug your child", "kiss your spouse", "don't go to bed angry", and so on and so forth. Another response to the hopelessness of death that I mentioned earlier, whether it's to "party heart and die high" or "the one with the most toys wins"  says, "I MUST live every moment to the fullest and grab everything in sight because life is meaningless anyway.

What I have been wrestling with is: What is God's attitude towards death? What in our life would compel an almighty God to welcome us to Heaven and say, "Well done my good and faithful servant?" What is the meaning of life as a realtor? Doctor? Or clerk at Walmart? What is my purpose in life now that I am no longer a missionary, no longer a wife, and no longer able to be a stay at home mom?

The bottom line of it all is, what does "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." really mean? What did Paul mean when he wrote it and what did the Holy Spirit intend to teach us by including this excerpt of Paul's life into Holy Scripture? And so I would wrestle.

I certainly do not understand everything about the meaning of life and our calling from God to live on this planet for a few short years. But I am here to share with you a little of my journey and the path of understanding that God has led me on.

About three years before going on the mission field the Holy Spirit began to do a work in Gary's and my heart. God began to overwhelm us with a desire to live our lives totally and completely for the glory of God. We began to desire to go to Mexico and minister the Gospel of grace, not "for" the Mexican people but "for" the Glory of God. In this call to the Glory of God we saw how human compassion would never cut it on the mission field. And having lived as a missionary I can say, that human compassion absolutely would NOT have gotten us through. When the earthquakes hit, the scorpions crawled into bed with us, and we were faced with every hardship and struggle imaginable, had it not been for the call to the Glory of God, we would never have stayed in Mexico more than the excitement and duration of a vacation.

It's been about five years now where the call and passion to do all things for the Glory of God has consumed Gary's and my life and now my life as a single woman. Yet, what does this mean in the nuts and bolts of waking up each morning? I think what God has shown me is that the verse where Paul says, "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain" comes together perfectly with a call and a passion to do all things for the Glory of God.

How do we live for eternity when our life can be so ordinary? It was much easier for this to make sense though on the mission field and a lot more difficult to picture what it will look like as I obtain my realtor's license. What does buying and selling houses have to do with the Glory of God??? How does being a realtor support the Biblical call to have our minds and hearts focused on eternity? And so I have wrestled......And through this wrestling I believe that God has shown me something profound.

 

The beach from our resort hotel

Two weeks after Gary died, several friends of ours treated our family to a vacation in Zihuatenejo Mexico. It is a beautiful beach resort town many many kilometers from our mountainous home in Taxco. We spent an incredible week at a very expensive resort hotel, eating the finest foods, and playing in the ocean with abandon. We even had a souvenir budget as we toured this beach town and my children discovered and shared my passion for the ocean.

Nathaniel Jet skiing in Zihuatenejo

Yet, no matter what we did in Zihuatenejo we were still in our hearts and in our actions citizens of Taxco, Guerrero. Taxco was home and no matter how wonderful the ocean was we all knew that we were just there for a brief time. When Bethany and I bought our hammocks, Nathaniel's big question was where and how would we hang them in our home in Taxco? Everything we did, even all of the crazy fun stuff that we experienced, such as jet skiing and chartering a fishing boat and eating our fresh caught fish on a neighboring beach, everything was focused on building our life as a family of missionaries to Taxco. Being missionaries to Taxco was our focus even while we were on vacation in Zihuatenejo. yet. we didn't sit forlorn in our hotel room pining for Taxco. We enjoyed Zihuatenejo to the fullest. We went to neighboring beaches and got plummeted to the depths of the ocean by the largest waves I had ever seen. We swam in the hotel pool, we jumped the ocean waves for endless hours, we built sandcastles, watched the beautiful sunsets, and walked the endless expanse of sand. We laughed, we talked, we loved and we built incredible memories in Zihuatenejo Mexico! Despite all the intense experiences, our heart was still focused on Taxco and home. For us to live was Taxco and to go home was gain!

Taxco-HOME

This revelation has changed my thinking. It was a spiritual revelation, which is difficult to communicate effectively in human terms. The Holy Spirit has totally changed my thinking about this short vacation we call life on planet earth. I now realize that we're all in Zihuatenejo if you will, and we are all heading home to Taxco, sooner than any of us may realize! The difficulty in this journey home to heaven is that we are all on different buses and different schedules. I probably won't journey home with Nathaniel and Bethany. Our travel home to Heaven is a solo journey as we fall into the arms of our savior. Of course this brings pain to those left to build sand castles alone on the beach of Zihuatenejo but when we see this life as just a short vacation at the ocean, we realize how brief it all is and that our focus during this vacation called life should be our home not our hotel!

"For me to live is Christ and to die is gain!" We're goin home folks! While we're here it's okay to go para sailing but as we're flying in the sky having fun on our vacation our heart is still wrapped around Taxco and home. Some days are mundane such as grocery shopping for supplies at our hotel suite and yet there are other times when this vacation gets serious and deep as we share with a chef and restaurant owner our passions for our home in Taxco. This vacation called "life" is a mixture of sorrow, tears, joys and triumphs but when our heart is so tied up in our savior and the Glory of God, we will always be thinking about home and sharing it with those around us. This is living the Christian life with a passion for the glory of God and a heart for our eternal home.


 As God prepared Gary's heart to journey home to heaven, Gary's spirit was enthralled with praise and worship to his savior. One of the last songs we sang at our family Bible study before Gary died was this old hymn called, "This World is Not My Home!"


THIS WORLD IS NOT MY HOME

Verse 1:
This world is not my home, I'm just a passing thru,
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue;
The angels beckon me from Heaven's open door,
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.

Chorus:
O Lord, you know I have no friend like you,
If Heaven's not my home, then Lord what will I do?
The angels beckon me from Heaven's open door,
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.

Verse 2:
They're all expecting me, and that's one thing I know.
My Savior pardoned me and now I onward go;
I know He'll take me thru tho I am weak and poor,
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.

Verse 3:
I have a loving mother up in gloryland.
I don't expect to stop until I shake her hand;
She's waiting now for me in Heaven's open door,
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.

Verse 4:
Just up in gloryland we'll live eternally.
The saints on ev'ry hand are shouting victory.
Their songs of sweetest praise drift back from Heaven's shore.
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.