It bothered me...
...I didn't want it to, but it did...And I have to tread carefully in my wording here so as not to give the wrong message.
My Aunt is staying at a Hospice house in South Carolina...It is a beautiful place. The people who work there are wonderful. They are caring and kind and go out of their way to serve. I have always heard good things about hospice and now I have experienced it first hand. The care and concern is a gift from God, I know.
But there was a constant undercurrent in my spirit that kept coming to me - and that was that part of this culture of dying necessarily includes an embracing of a work of the enemy. A beautifying of the curse of Adam. It almost seemed like a shrine to death. Not that I believe that was at the heart of the Hospice movement. In reading about it, it was largely born out of a concern for the way dying people were treated. Everyone should be honored and respected and the hospice movement should be credited with bringing about this dignity. If I am ever in a bad way, I would enjoy very much to be in one of these facilities. They themselves are happy when someone "fails" hospice and goes home.
Maybe that's the issue for me...Hospice has a connotation of meaning 'where you go when there is no hope'. Where you go to die. The expectation then is set.
At this particular place, they provide the book "On death and dying" by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. It explains the stages of dying that she observed.
Yay for preparing people.
Boo for seting up an expectation of death.
Kubler-Ross wrote 21 books on dying and eventually became involved in contacting the dead through mediums. Spiritually this disturbs me. Her life was spent focused on the enemy's crowning glory. I don't want Kubler-Ross's tome about accepting death and embracing it as a transition into the next life. Death lost it's sting at Jesus' resurrection - that doesn't mean it is no longer a work of the enemy. Sin also lost it's sting. That doesn't make it good.
While it is important to accept the reality of death, I also know that we aren't to conform to the patterns of this world. Could one of those patterns be the passive acceptance of "we're born, we move on we die, that's life"? Even if things look grim, are we supposed to sit and just wait for a loved one to die or are we supposed to live with hope at all times? Even if it requires getting up out of our grief and hoping again the next time we see cancer or AIDS or whatever ravaging a loved one's body? Even if 99.9% of the time there is no healing, are we called to the
Hope - the knowledge, the faith that God is more powerful than death and He can override it anytime in anyone. old people, young people, Christians and non Christians?
I ask this of myself because hoping against hope can become extremely painful.
Yet, I remember that the disciples huddled in the boat as a storm raged, knowing they would surely die. Jesus said "where is your faith?" and rebuked the storm. They all survived and Peter walked on water.
Am I to take this as a story from long ago - maybe just a myth - or am I supposed to live it and stand in the face of every storm knowing that the God of all creation is in the boat with me?
My Aunt is staying at a Hospice house in South Carolina...It is a beautiful place. The people who work there are wonderful. They are caring and kind and go out of their way to serve. I have always heard good things about hospice and now I have experienced it first hand. The care and concern is a gift from God, I know.
But there was a constant undercurrent in my spirit that kept coming to me - and that was that part of this culture of dying necessarily includes an embracing of a work of the enemy. A beautifying of the curse of Adam. It almost seemed like a shrine to death. Not that I believe that was at the heart of the Hospice movement. In reading about it, it was largely born out of a concern for the way dying people were treated. Everyone should be honored and respected and the hospice movement should be credited with bringing about this dignity. If I am ever in a bad way, I would enjoy very much to be in one of these facilities. They themselves are happy when someone "fails" hospice and goes home.
Maybe that's the issue for me...Hospice has a connotation of meaning 'where you go when there is no hope'. Where you go to die. The expectation then is set.
At this particular place, they provide the book "On death and dying" by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. It explains the stages of dying that she observed.
Yay for preparing people.
Boo for seting up an expectation of death.
Kubler-Ross wrote 21 books on dying and eventually became involved in contacting the dead through mediums. Spiritually this disturbs me. Her life was spent focused on the enemy's crowning glory. I don't want Kubler-Ross's tome about accepting death and embracing it as a transition into the next life. Death lost it's sting at Jesus' resurrection - that doesn't mean it is no longer a work of the enemy. Sin also lost it's sting. That doesn't make it good.
While it is important to accept the reality of death, I also know that we aren't to conform to the patterns of this world. Could one of those patterns be the passive acceptance of "we're born, we move on we die, that's life"? Even if things look grim, are we supposed to sit and just wait for a loved one to die or are we supposed to live with hope at all times? Even if it requires getting up out of our grief and hoping again the next time we see cancer or AIDS or whatever ravaging a loved one's body? Even if 99.9% of the time there is no healing, are we called to the
Hope - the knowledge, the faith that God is more powerful than death and He can override it anytime in anyone. old people, young people, Christians and non Christians?
I ask this of myself because hoping against hope can become extremely painful.
Yet, I remember that the disciples huddled in the boat as a storm raged, knowing they would surely die. Jesus said "where is your faith?" and rebuked the storm. They all survived and Peter walked on water.
Am I to take this as a story from long ago - maybe just a myth - or am I supposed to live it and stand in the face of every storm knowing that the God of all creation is in the boat with me?
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