My dearest cousin’s husband is dying.  How odd that phrase when , in fact, we are all dying, just at different times.  For an atheist the idea of death must be one of great loss and despair.  To have as your only hope, “like the little dog rover, when you’re dead you’re dead all over,” would not be extremely comforting.  I suspect most atheists don’t remind themselves of death very often.  Yet, we are surrounded by it.  Every day the local paper reports them in the “obit” section.  I am very happy to report that my cousin’s family are not atheists and have a comfort available to them that is not the case for people that prefer to “go it alone” without God.  There are days when my cousin’s husband just wants to go on and leave the old shell behind, but he lingers.  Even in asking, “why,” we know, if we’re honest in our quest for the answer.  I believe the answer is the one given by one actor to another in a movie I saw once.  One asked the other on the occasion of leaving this life for the next, “It’s hard to let go isn’t it?”

Physical life is precious, it’s a gift of God, yet, eternal life is so much more a gift.  The transformation from one to the other is a great mystery.  In his great novel, “If Winter Comes”, A.S.M. Hutchinson describes how a young man named Freddie Perch who had just been killed in the war (WW I) came back to help his mother die.  He was the type of son that would never allow his mother to even cross a road without him.  And here he was to help his mother cross the greatest road in her life.

She was moaning….  That inhabitant of her body had done its preparations and now stood at the door in the darkness, very frightened.  It wanted to go back.  It had been very accustomed to being here.  It could not go back.  It did not want to shut the door.  The door was shutting.  It stood and shrank and whimpered there…..  It was old Mrs. Perch that stood there whimpering, shrinking upon the threshold of that huge abyss, wide as space, dark as night …

“Now then Mother! Don’t be frightened. Here I am, Mother. Come on, Mother.  One step, Mother, only one.  I can’t reach you.  You must take just one step.  Look, Mother here’s my hand, Can’t you see my hand?”

“It’s so dark, Freddie!”

“It’s not, Mother. It’s only dark where you are. It’s light here. Don’t cry Mother. Don’t be frightened. It’s all right. It’s quite all right.”

“…it’s so cold.”

“Now, Mother, I tell you it isn’t. Do just trust me. Do just come.”

“I daren’t Freddie. I can’t Freddie. I can’t. I can’t.”

“You must Mother. Mother, you must. Look, look here, here I am. It’s I, Freddie. Don’t cry Mother. …. Look here’s my hand. Just one tiny step and you will touch it. I know you feel ill, darling Mother. You won’t any more, any more, once you touch my hand.”

“‘But I can’t come any nearer, dearest. You must. You – Ah brave, beloved Mother – NOW!”

….That inhabitant of this her body, in act of going had looked back, and its look had done this thing. It had closed the door upon a ruined house, and looked, and left a temple.

Freddie’s Mother had left her old temple where God had lived for a time, left it for a new temple, an eternal one.

“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, and eternal house in heaven, not built with human hands” (2 Cor. 5:1)

Photo by thatgrrl and used under creative commons license agreement