Pastor Bo WagnerEvery belief system has the same temporal ending to deal with: death.
As a pastor and evangelist, I am in death’s presence often, sitting and praying with people as they near the end and then preaching their funerals. After 20 years of doing so more times than I can count, I cannot help but notice and remember how very different they usually are based on what a person and the family have held to through the years.
Last year I said goodbye to one of the godliest old deacons who ever lived, brother Joe. For weeks, he knew death was coming. And yet he met it confidently, and his family smiled while they wept.
Years ago, a dear gentleman in my church was dying of cancer, and as he took his last few moments worth of terrestrial breaths, he smiled and held his hands up to heaven, as his family sang “What a Day That Will Be.”
I think of those and many more instances like them, and I smile. But then I shudder as I think of other times far different.