Fruit Cove Baptist Church

Does Brittany Maynard’s decision to die with dignity in Oregon really mean anything to you?  How can a young woman diagnosed with brain cancer on the other side of the country affect your life where you live and breathe today?  Should we care?  Do you?

The “death with dignity” debate has brought to the forefront disparate groups of people on both sides of the issue.  On one hand, there are those who see her decision to “die on her own terms” as brave, even heroic as a gesture. They would advocate the administration of drugs underwritten by government funds to “hasten the end” of a suffering person (insert “Alzheimer’s patient,” “baby with birth defect,” or “person averse to suffering”).  After all, no one has to suffer if they don’t want to, right?

On the other hand are those represented by the Vatican’s statement that Brittany’s actions were an “absurdity.”   But can we write her situation off and dismiss her as an anomaly, or are other people waiting to walk in her footsteps?  And after all, brain cancer is a horrific illness.  I watched my own father die with it.  “So what do we say to these things,” as Paul eloquently asked the Romans.  How do we respond to a situation that falls somewhere between absurd and logical?

Let me be personal.  Was there a value in my father’s dying?  I watched day by day, sometimes up close and sometimes at a distance as the man I knew and loved gradually slipped away in confusion, and perhaps in pain.  We really couldn’t tell, because my Dad was the kind of guy that wouldn’t have admitted it had he felt it.  I watched the loving sacrifice of his wife, my Mom, as she walked with him through the toughest miles of their marriage.  She would sit for hours holding his head on her lap in the nursing home where he spent his last weeks on earth.  She would slip headphones on him so he could listen to tapes of Bill Gaither’s Homecoming and block out the cries and chaos of that place.  Would my Mom trade those last days with my Dad?  Would she wish them to be hastened along by a “merciful” intervention from a doctor who has rejected the Hippocratic Oath? She never said. But I think not. Because love doesn’t walk away in the midst of the fire.

It stays.

“What can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord?”  Absolutely nothing.  So what do we say to those who are standing in the midst of the fiery trial of suffering with an invasion of cancer or the robbery of Alzheimer’s?  Do we tell them to walk away?  That God doesn’t believe in His Creation suffering?  That pain has no purpose and no place in His plan?  “No, in all these things we are super conquerers” through Jesus Christ.  But the conquerer doesn’t leave until the battle has ended.  Deserters are never given medals.  Neither do they know the joy of conquest.  The overcomer doesn’t walk away from the fight.   And neither should we.

In his book THE FIGHT, John White says, “Tough times will either make you or break you.  If you are not utterly crushed by them, you will be enlarged by them.  The pain will make you live more deeply and expand your consciousness of God.”

There are two ways to go through life.  We can go through life like a snorkeler, living on the surface and seeing some things at a distance, or we can live like a diver, swimming beneath the waves and experiencing life in a way the snorkeler never does.

Living deeply is our desire. Living deeply means we live more and more in reliance upon God. (Romans 5:3-5)

But living deeply comes with a cost.  Avoiding pain and difficult leads us to a shallow life, a shallow character, a shallow faith.  We aspire to have the character of Christ  formed in us but for that character to be fully formed God must chip away those things in our lives that don’t look like Jesus.  The “chipping away” is painful.

Christ taught us how to live deeply in the times of testing.  As He hung upon the cross, dying for our sins, the book of Hebrews said “For the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame…”

Our focus must be on the end result of our struggle, not on the pain itself.  It is Christ’s desire to bring us “life, and that more abundantly.”  That’s living more deeply.  That’s walking with Christ in the fellowship of His suffering.  And that’s where we meet Jesus most powerfully.

Most normal people like Krispy Kreme donuts (in my opinion).  Some of us like them TOO much!  No one, however, would enjoy eating a cold ball of fat and dough which is what a Krispy Kreme really is….before the fire.

These tasteless little dough-balls are placed through an intricate process of preparation which begins by creating a hole in the center with a blast of air.  The now circular dough is then placed in a proof box and through the application of heat and humidity made to rise.  After the dough has risen, it is then dumped unceremoniously into a vat of boiling oil.  When it is cooked through, the newly created doughnut is run through a cascading waterfall of sweet icing.  Voila!  A Krispy Kreme doughnut is born.

The New Testament books and letters compiled from Hebrews to Revelation are directed to Christians going through the fire. Sometimes we wonder why we’re being blasted, boiled, and “proven.”  It is, as Peter said, “… so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”   (1 Peter 1:7)

As with our little doughball, the result of the fire always brings about a sweeter outcome than we began with.  There are things that God can only do with us as He places us in “the proof box” and turns up the heat.  We have a choice.  We can resent the process and fight it every step of the way, or we can surrender to the greater will of the Father and accept it “with joy.”  (James 1:3)

God promises the sweetness will come as He finishes what He started in your life and mine. Hang in there. Don’t give up.  The best is yet to be.