Death, Dying & the Last of It

 I read obituaries. This is something I have been doing for about 15 years. When I was young, I didn't think much about death or dying. I lived as if eternity didn't matter. I lived without thinking about what is after Death. I rarely considered the idea of eternal Judgement. I thought that what mattered most was life - not what came after life. At some point, I started to consider my eternal fate. I wondered, "What if I die and there is a Heaven and Hell?"

What do you believe? Is there a Heaven and Hell? What will happen when you die? Will you just forever be over with? Or will you close your eyes in this life to wake up to the next stage? What is that next stage? What do you believe and why? How sure are you?

Death became more "real" to me when people I knew began to die. I wondered where they were. I would think about how they had lived their lives and what they had lived for. And then I realized that one day, my obituary is the one people would be reading. That is when I started paying attention to death notices. I was curious about how strangers - the famous and the non-famous - had died. How old were they when they died? What had caused them to die? And then, as I read more obituaries, I realized that no matter how famous, infamous, celebrated or ordinary someone was, Death was their ending. We, the living, after we finished grieving, we went on living.

When Michael Jackson died, I remembered how "larger than life" he'd always seemed. From the time I was a tweeny-bopper until the day Jackson died, he was the biggest celebrity. I'd lived through the Jackson 5 cartoons and tours and the brief breakout careers of some of the guys. I'd lived through LaToya trying to breakout, Janet actually breaking out and making it big. I'd watched the show where Michael moonwalked right into megastardom to eventually become known as "The King of Pop". And when he died, he was just dead. People cried and raved and mourned hard until they went on with their own lives. Micheal Jackson became a memory. He was someone who had lived so large and then he was just dead. Dead like someone who'd never been known for anything but living a regular life. Dead like someone who'd been so unknown their body had gone unclaimed. Dead is dead is dead is dead. All that fame and talent and clamor of his fans didn't change the fact that he was dead.

So. How does any of a person's life here among the living matter to their after-life existence? Is Michael Jackson famous where he now exists? Does he matter any more than anyone else where he now exists? I don't think so. I think he - like we all will - is living his eternal life however he is living his eternal life. It will be the same for you and for me and for the person who dies unknown and unmourned.

And so when I see people who give away everything to be famous or known or celebrated or rich or envied, I think about the dead. I think about the existence after this one.

So, yeah, I think that we all need a reminder of how close death is to us. It doesn't matter how old or young you are, you can be taking your last breath at this moment.

There are times when I get bogged down in regret or get high on pride. That's when I need a reminder. There are some people who are so busy living that they forget they will, one day, die. That's when they need a reminder.

Your choices matter. Your actions matter. One day, you will cease to exist in a living body. 

How important is money? Fame? Is anything worth your soul?

You are dying. I am dying. That is a fact. 

Being beautiful won't keep Death away. Being thin or rich or powerful - none of that can defeat Death. 

There is Life, there is Death, and there are Consequences. It all matters. 

Some people are banking on this life. They are after everything they can gain here - power, wealth, beauty, fame, etc. They are selling eternity for the now. And there is nothing wrong with having power, wealth, beauty, fame or etc. The error is in choosing it over eternity.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. (2 Corinthians 5:10 ESV)

When you need to be reminded of life and death and eternal existence, go read some "notable" obituaries. Read them and think about what matters here in the now and what will matter there in the next - whatever that "next" is.

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:19-21 ESV) 

Think about the next life as you live this one. It matters.

Peace

--Free

Maybe You Don't Know About...Margaret Sanger

 This is the woman who established what came to be Planned Parenthood. People today tend to praise her as a person for being in support of birth control and a woman's right of choice. Sounds good, on the surface.

I know people who have used the services of Planned Parenthood. What's ironic is that most of these people are outspoken in their support of things like "Black Lives Matter" and live by the code of being black and proud. They are living in selective ignorance.

When we are taught by the media and mainstream social programming to use words like "reproductive rights" and "my body, my choice", we forget the ugly side of things. Arguing against a person's "rights" and "choice" sounds bossy and totalitarian. But let's look at things a different way.

Killing outside of law and justice is wrong, true, or false?

If a person is allowed to do away with an unwanted fetus, why not allow them to do away with an unwanted 2-year-old? (And let's leave rape and incest out of this one, if it pleases you.)

If we have access to rights, do we have an obligation to responsibility?

If it is your right to choose to terminate a pregnancy, is it your responsibility to practice careful sex?

If you can be frank enough to talk freely about your abortion or random sex activities, can you be frank enough to call abortion what it really is? 

People like to say that we have "evolved" as a society. We are so free with our "evolution" that we have more fun words for sin. Instead of having sex outside of marriage, it sounds much more normal and "okay" to call it "hooking up", "Netflix and chilling", etc.

Sin has been given a free pass today. You aren't allowed to call someone a "slut" or "easy" without being damned for it. These days, society turns the tables on you when you call out sexual sin. They will "cancel you". They will try to shame you for "slut-shaming" instead of admitting that there is such a thing as a slut. If you are acting like a slut, why are you bothered with being called a slut?

If you believe that homosexuality is morally wrong, you can no longer say that. If you do, you could face being charged with "hate speech" or committing a "hate crime". But the gay person isn't going to be charged for committing sodomy.

It is no longer acceptable to just be civil to gay people. For a while, we were told to be "tolerant" (and I was never hostile to gay people) but now we are being forced to be accepting. I will never be accepting of sin, no matter how accepting I am to a person.

By the way, Satan pulled a good one when he managed to equate the moral sin of homosexuality with being of a minority race. If you are a racial minority you will be shamed for "picking on" the LGBTQ community. Do you know how this happens? Money. The LGBTQ community has money - lots of it - lobbyists and power. Lots of power. Politicians and laws tend to flow with the money.

So all this personal "freedom" to sin comes from years of programming and putting things into play, bit by bit. And yet, getting back to Margaret Sanger, most people have no idea what she was actually about.

Sanger wanted to see a decrease in the birth of blacks. She rode hard with eugenicists. She found certain groups "unfit" to have children - not unfit because of abuse but because of economic and educational status. 

These days, Planned Parenthood is trying to distance itself from Sanger. However, they were founded on her principles and ideas. Maybe what they are really doing is trying not to look as awful as they are.

Peace

--Free

Trending, Trodding & Co-existing

Today was the first day in a long time that I spent more than an hour scrolling Twitter. Now I can't help but think about how everything is being politicized.

You can't have a thought or an idea that isn't turned into some kind of statement. 

After that hour scrolling tweets, I started muting every one except those sharing jokes, light-hearted memes and animal pictures.

The tweet world is on fire with anger and indignation and allegiance to or protests about something. Anything. Everything.

What happened to giving attention to things of joy? Let's talk about gratitude. Why not focus every now and then on the good in people? 

Have we forgotten to be kind to one group of people without attacking another group of people? 

Have we lost the ability to protest without lying or exaggerating or being hateful?

Why can't I tell you that I am against something - and why - without you going ballistic or sarcastic or meme-hateful?

My late grandfather - who was born in 1897 or 1899 - disliked white people. He lived in West Texas. The whites in his town weren't crazy about him. My grandfather and these white people did business together. They bought, sold, and traded produce and cattle among themselves. They didn't like each other and some of them hated each other, but they had to co-exist. 

I grew up an Air Force brat and had been raised among was exposed to a lot of racial diversity. This didn't mean there was no prejudice, racism, and ugliness. This just meant that my family learned to live in that environment. My father and mother were Southerners and had their own feelings about white people. But we lived in and had to co-exist with all types of people.

Somehow, I thought my grandfather's feelings about white people were different from my parent's feelings. As a young girl, I was fascinated by how open my grandfather was in his dislike and sometimes outright contempt of white people. He often made comments about white people - probably the same comments they made about him. He'd say things like "He's alright for a white man", "He hates negroes but he's fair", "That old cracker there...", and so on.

My grandfather and his white neighbors communicated civilly - for the most part. They coexisted fairly peacefully. It wasn't until I was older and wiser that I realized something. In my grandfather's mind, he and these white people didn't have to like each other but they had to somehow co-exist - he in his part of town and they in their part of town. He had goods and services they wanted and needed and they had goods and services he wanted and needed. Period.

Today, we have lost the ability to peacefully co-exist. I learned from my parents and grandparents that I don't have to like or agree with or approve of someone to co-exist with them. I will stay in my church, my beliefs, my morals, my politics, and my worldview and let them be in theirs. I will ride the bus with them and shop in stores with them without being uncivil.

If you ever read some of Zora Neale Hurston's anthropological stories of the "negro", you will see my parents and grandparents in them. My grandfather's childhood contemporaries probably thought of Heaven as segregated but they understood that Heaven was open to all who belonged there - regardless of race.

What we have to remember today is that, no matter how different we are, we all share this earth. I don't have to agree with you or like you to live peacefully with you. "As for me and my house" and as for you and yours. I won't support or uplift anything that is against my faith and beliefs but I won't be at constant war with you over our differences. I won't agree with you just to keep the peace but I won't go to war with you. Fighting with you won't bring you the Gospel. Agreeing with your sin won't benefit me. But we will co-exist because earth is all we have - until we don't.

When I say that we must co-exist, I don't mean that we must co-believe, co-agree, and co-sign each other. I mean that my only goal in life is to live for the Lord and let you decide who and what you want to live for.

I'm not going to let you force me to say that I am okay with your sin. Be gay, be polyamorous, be Satanic, be "moral" but Atheistic. Be whatever you will be but don't get mad that I am not cheering you on.

Let me be Christian. Hate me if you want but don't forget to look in the mirror when you cry "Hypocrite!" or call me close-minded or sheep-like. 

If I call you a name for being ~fill in the blank~  gay, adulterous, non-binary, etc, it's a hate crime or considered shaming. If you mock me for being a follower of Christ, it's you simply "calling me out" or "canceling" me. 

There is going to come a day when those who do not live for the Lord are going to go after those who do - even harder than they do now. I believe that the trend of politicizing everything and making small battles of everything is priming us for that big battle.

Anyway. I just wanted to speak on this while the thoughts were in my mind. Make of it what you will.

Peace

--Free