THE SHEPHERD’S CORNER

You may not know him personally, but you have prayed for him every week; for that I’d like to thank you.  Dr. Hadi was a friend to many in our church and he was unhealthy for quite some time; that was why we lifted his name up in our intercessory prayer week after week.  But today he no longer needs our prayer; on Tuesday, in the wee morning hour, he slipped into his eternal home.  So long, Hadi.

His death reminds me of this timeless truth from Ecclesiastes 8:8, “As no one has power over the wind to contain it, so no one has power over the time of their death.”  I remember how encouraged we were upon hearing the news that finally there was a suitable liver for him.  I also remember how glad we were upon learning that the transplant was successful.  At last total healing was in sight, so we thought.  But God has a different and better plan; once again we are reminded that we have no power over the time of our death.

In his book, The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis’s last book in his Chronicle of the Narnia’ series, Aslan, a lion, who is the personification of Christ, makes this sobering and hope-filled remark, “There was a real railway accident.  Your father and mother and all of you are . . . dead.  The term is over: the holidays have begun.  The dream is ended: this is the morning.”  With this Lewis, then, concludes,

“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 in Narnia 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.”  Amen.

Pastor Paul