Silent, Inevitable
Natasha Richardson recently died of an acute epidural hematoma.
I do not have the medical background to describe her affliction, but from what I gather she suffered a blunt impact to her head -causing blood to fill a gap between the brain and the skull. This gap grew until it pushed her brain into a series of sharp-edged bones -eventually causing her death.
Perhaps the most dramatic aspect of her condition was her obliviousness to it. At first she was totally aware of her injury. For some time she thought she would be fine. A certain pain began to grow, which seemed to be nothing more than a slight headache at first. The severity of her condition was not obvious until some time later.
It would not be correct to say that this woman was totally oblivious to her condition. She knew that "something" had happened, but there was some question as to just how bad it was. From what I understand there was a sense that things would soon go back to normal.
Her case is dramatic, and a source of study for professionals in the medical field. On the other hand, it really is not so different from a very real, a very overlooked part of life. And this part of life is inevitable.
As children we learn that everyone comes to a point where they die. The dramatic part is when we learn that we ourselves shall die. As Woody Allen once noted, "I'm not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens." And so people prepare for death by checking out of life.
Perhaps it could best be said that when death comes across most people, like Natasha Richardson, it finds they had really died long ago.
Natasha Richardson concealed her death within her, and human beings also conceal their death within themselves. No one knew what was happening in her brain until it was too late, and even a CAT scan would probably have not revealed the true condition. In the same way people keep their worst things in a place where no one can see them.
When a person wishes desperately that they were somewhere else, that they were talking with someone else, that they were themselves someone else, such a person essentially wishes to be removed from their own life.
Perhaps there is no stronger kind of desperate wishing than the kind afforded by guilt. When a person commits a crime, when they come to regard the person they see in the mirror as a criminal, they often wish (sometimes passively, other times violently) to be someone else.
And the desperate desire to be someone else is the true death.
As in the case of epidural hematoma, immediate action is necessary. The means of deliverance is not an obvious, passive remedy, but a dramatic and all-risking intervention. Just as the appearance of health and good looks were not enough to save Natasha Richardson, the appearance of good behavior is not enough to save us.
When a human being genuinely and completely gives their life over to Christ, they are doing something that is far, far different from rearranging the appearance of their life. Something very deep within changes ... and dies. The effect is not that they wear different clothes or speak with different words. They become a different person.
And just as a full and complete healing would have been a full and complete miracle in the case of Natasha Richardson, nothing short of a full and complete miracle will deliver us from the death within us.
The solution for the death that has awaited us all, in fact any reversal of our condition, is radical, and seems to hard to explain. Just as it would have been hard to explain how Natasha Richardson could have recovered, it is difficult -almost impossible!- to explain how our condition can be reversed.
The solution, the prescription not written with fallible human fingers but by the hands of the divine doctor, is to give one's entire life over to God. To love him with the entirity of one's heart, one's soul, all one's mind and all one's strength. This is the severity of the prescription.
The promise of recovery, however, is sure. God offers His healing, His gifts, yes, even Himself! over to those who throw themselves into the recovery plan He has written, which is the life of His Son Jesus Christ.
May God continue to work His will in the lives of those He has chosen as Jesus draws all men unto himself. May the light of Christ shine in those who fear him and love him completely.
I do not have the medical background to describe her affliction, but from what I gather she suffered a blunt impact to her head -causing blood to fill a gap between the brain and the skull. This gap grew until it pushed her brain into a series of sharp-edged bones -eventually causing her death.
Perhaps the most dramatic aspect of her condition was her obliviousness to it. At first she was totally aware of her injury. For some time she thought she would be fine. A certain pain began to grow, which seemed to be nothing more than a slight headache at first. The severity of her condition was not obvious until some time later.
It would not be correct to say that this woman was totally oblivious to her condition. She knew that "something" had happened, but there was some question as to just how bad it was. From what I understand there was a sense that things would soon go back to normal.
Her case is dramatic, and a source of study for professionals in the medical field. On the other hand, it really is not so different from a very real, a very overlooked part of life. And this part of life is inevitable.
As children we learn that everyone comes to a point where they die. The dramatic part is when we learn that we ourselves shall die. As Woody Allen once noted, "I'm not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens." And so people prepare for death by checking out of life.
Perhaps it could best be said that when death comes across most people, like Natasha Richardson, it finds they had really died long ago.
Natasha Richardson concealed her death within her, and human beings also conceal their death within themselves. No one knew what was happening in her brain until it was too late, and even a CAT scan would probably have not revealed the true condition. In the same way people keep their worst things in a place where no one can see them.
When a person wishes desperately that they were somewhere else, that they were talking with someone else, that they were themselves someone else, such a person essentially wishes to be removed from their own life.
Perhaps there is no stronger kind of desperate wishing than the kind afforded by guilt. When a person commits a crime, when they come to regard the person they see in the mirror as a criminal, they often wish (sometimes passively, other times violently) to be someone else.
And the desperate desire to be someone else is the true death.
As in the case of epidural hematoma, immediate action is necessary. The means of deliverance is not an obvious, passive remedy, but a dramatic and all-risking intervention. Just as the appearance of health and good looks were not enough to save Natasha Richardson, the appearance of good behavior is not enough to save us.
When a human being genuinely and completely gives their life over to Christ, they are doing something that is far, far different from rearranging the appearance of their life. Something very deep within changes ... and dies. The effect is not that they wear different clothes or speak with different words. They become a different person.
And just as a full and complete healing would have been a full and complete miracle in the case of Natasha Richardson, nothing short of a full and complete miracle will deliver us from the death within us.
The solution for the death that has awaited us all, in fact any reversal of our condition, is radical, and seems to hard to explain. Just as it would have been hard to explain how Natasha Richardson could have recovered, it is difficult -almost impossible!- to explain how our condition can be reversed.
The solution, the prescription not written with fallible human fingers but by the hands of the divine doctor, is to give one's entire life over to God. To love him with the entirity of one's heart, one's soul, all one's mind and all one's strength. This is the severity of the prescription.
The promise of recovery, however, is sure. God offers His healing, His gifts, yes, even Himself! over to those who throw themselves into the recovery plan He has written, which is the life of His Son Jesus Christ.
May God continue to work His will in the lives of those He has chosen as Jesus draws all men unto himself. May the light of Christ shine in those who fear him and love him completely.
3 Comments:
Thanks for reminding me that Jesus is drawing all men unto Himself. I've been feeling a bit hopeless about my fellow human beings of late...and also, myself. Being born again is a drastic and immediate change yet, giving myself to Him seems to remain a life-long process. At times, I think the process is complete and then I find myself in a mess with myself, again, and have to start all over, again. How blessed I am that He never turns me away.
Hi Lady Lavender,
This has been weighing on me as well. I am often reminded of the verse at the beginning of the Brothers Karamazov:
"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." John 12:24
It gets tough when their is a conflict with others over what is really important and you feel that if you don't win the arguement they may be able to take everything you have. All that is in me screams fight!but that small still voice keeps saying, love, lift me up so that all men will be drawn to me. It is so hard to hear that voice when your heart and mind is filled with that defensive, protective, and yes, patriotic anger. I can't say that my anger is gone. God blessed us with such good things in America and above them all is the Constitution. I don't want to lose that but in reality, we have lost so much of it because we weren't paying attention and we were taking our blessings for granted. I fervently hope that God is not done blessing America but I know that can only come if we listen to that small still voice and not our fervent anger. Pray for me to find the balance in wanting to protect my beloved country, my home and keeping the souls of men and God's love for them upmost in my mind and I'll pray for you.
This is such a hard time for conservative Americans but I can't quite imagine what it is like to be your age or my son's ages and have so little peer support for loving the traditional America. Socialism, facsism, communism, anarchism, are real threats to me now but not in many of my peers. I know young people have to stand up to it on a much more personal level and you have had to for awhile. Maybe that is a hidden blessing in that you already attach real people to the ideas where as I have more of the sense of wanting to punch and kill a really bad 'idea' that threatens us?
I guess I can't get over the daily unreality of it and on other days the reality of it overwhelms me. We are not the first peoples to have to live through something like this but I never thought I'd see it in my lifetime, not in America. I am mourning my country while also trying not to give up hope and not be pulled to far from my relationship with God by all my emotions. I do not want to live in fear! I do not want to give them that! I also know only God can give me that peace and strenghth and I can only receive it by relying on Him.
Sorry, if I'm babbling. This is and extroidinary time to live through.
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