Dying Well

last nite i got Calvin Miller's new book "Once Upon a Tree" from dave. i started reading it before i went to bed. good stuff.

in the introduction he talks alot about dying and the power that the cross has to bring us through the pain of it all. he mentions a scare he had where the possibility of death was very real and how he noticed that death was not as terrifying as he thought it would be.

funny how we run so quickly from death. its definitely not an easy thing, but its the inevitable end of us all.

funny how a mutilating that took place years ago on a cross brings us a comfort to face our own mortality.

miller mentions the idea that the cross did not happen only in 33ad. it is happening today.
"Did he really die two thousand years ago? It seems not so. It seems he's dying now-- ever dying. I daily gaze upon his cross, and I am rebuked for my own pursuit of ease. I cannot place Good Friday in the distant past. Good Friday is last Friday, next Friday, every Friday. I must daily die to self and live for him. I must count on its continuing glory; I must repeatedly reckon with its demands."

there is a demand that this particular death places on us. but i think, contrary to some ideas, it is not a demand to die. i would say it is a demand to live. in Last Samurai, after the death of one of the characters, a friend asks someone who was with him when he died, "Tell me how he died." the reply of the one who was with the dying man was, "No, I will tell you how he lived."

there is a mystery in laying down our lives with Christ to experience what it means to live. there is a mystery in being nailed to a cross with Christ, but living. yet not living yourself, but the life of this same dying Christ living through you, coursing through your every heart beat.

may you die well today.