Tag Archives: C. S. Lewis

At Greater Risk of Death…?

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“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”
(Psalm 90:12 ESV)

As I was watching the local news last week, an interesting segment caught my eye.  A recent medical study has shown that if you sit at work you have an increased chance of dying.  I know what they meant was that you have an increased risk of dying at a younger age or from heart related issues – but my mind couldn’t get past the absurdity of the way the study was presented.  If you have a job that requires you to sit for long periods of time, you have a greater risk of death.  Greater than what?  Does an office job pose a greater risk of death than, let’s say, an active duty soldier, an electrician working on high tension lines, a miner working deep underground?  If so, then I think that to be an acceptable risk.

Still, how can a job that requires one to sit increase the chance of dying?  I was under the assumption that each of us faced a 100% chance of death.  Is there a job that lowers that chance?  Would someone please tell me what it is, so that I may apply?  To highlight the universality of death, here are some of my favorite quotes on the topic:

“The end of birth is death, the end of death is birth: this is ordained!”  Sir Edwin Arnold

“Death is as necessary to the constitution as sleep: we shall rise refreshed in the morning.”  Benjamin Franklin

“Pale Death, in impartial step, knocks as the poor man’s cottage and at the palaces of kings.”  Horace: Odes

“When death comes, he respects neither age nor merit.  He sweeps from this earthly existence the sick and the strong, the rich and the poor, and should teach us to live to be prepared for death.”  Andrew Jackson

“A man can die but once: we owe God a death.”  Shakespeare: Henry IV

“Every man dies, but not every man really lives.”  William Wallace, Braveheart

My personal favorite – “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”  The Apostle Paul, Philippians 1:21

The Bible also reminds us that each of us must face death.  Genesis 3:19 reminds us that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.  Death is a fact of life.  Yes, death is painful, for in death we lose the presence of those whom we love.  Death is the end of life, and for those who love well and are well loved, death is an agonizing separation.  But for the Christian, death is the end of the struggle against sin, the laying aside of this perishable body to take up that which is imperishable and unfading.  Death is the entry into everlasting life in the glorious company of the saints in light.  Here’s another great quote:

“Death is not, to the Christian, what it has often been called, “Paying the debt of nature.”  No, it is not paying a debt; it is rather like bringing a note to a bank to obtain solid gold in exchange for it.  You bring a cumbrous body which is nothing worth, and which you could not wish to retain long; you lay it down, and receive for it, from the eternal treasures, liberty, victory, knowledge, and rapture.”  John Foster

There is wisdom to be had in remembering the inevitability of our own mortality.  Psalm 90:12 says, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”  Studies have shown that 100 people out of 100 will eventually die; nothing you do will increase or decrease your chances of dying.  I know that I will not live forever, that one day I will die and leave this life behind.  The question each of us must ask is this, “Will death be the end of my life, or just the beginning?”

At the conclusion of The Chronicles of Narnia, as Narnia is coming to an end, C. S. Lewis writes:

And so for us it is the end of all stories, and we can most truly say they lived happily ever after.  But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.  And all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: and now they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has ever read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.  -C.S. Lewis The Last Battle.

The Second Coming

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I’ve been doing a bit of reading this Advent Season, trying to preach advent messages from a fresh perspective.  I came upon this from C.S. Lewis I thought I’d share.

In King Lear (III:VII) there is a man who is such a minor character that Shakespeare has not given him even a name; he is merely “First Servant.”  All the characters around him – Regan, Cornwall, and Edmund – have fine long-term plans.  They think they know how the story is going to end, and they are quite wrong.  The servant has no such delusions.  He has no notion of how the play is going to go.  but he understands the present scene.  He sees an abomination (the blinding of Gloucester) taking place.  He will not stand it.  His sword is out and pointed at his master’s breast in a moment: then Regan stabs him dead from behind.  That is his whole part: eight lines all told.  But if it were real life and not a play, that is the part it would be best to have acted.

The doctrine of the Second Coming teaches us that we do not and cannot know when the world drama will end.  the curtain may be rung down at any moment: say, before you have finished reading this paragraph.  This seems to some people intolerably frustrating.  So many things would be interrupted.  Perhaps you were going to get married next month, perhaps you were going to get a raise next week: you may be on the verge of a great scientific discovery; you may be maturing great social and political reforms.  Surely no good and wise God would be so very unreasonable as to cut all this short?  Not now, of all moments.

But we think thus because we keep on assuming that we know the play.  We do not know the play.  We do not even know whether we are in Act I or Act V.  We do not know who are the major and the minor characters.  The Author knows.  The audience, if there is an audience (if angels and archangels and all the company of Heaven fill the pit and the stalls), may have an inkling.  But we, never seeing the play from outside, never meeting any characters except the tiny minority who are “on” in the same scenes as ourselves, wholly ignorant of the future and very imperfectly informed about the past, cannot tell at what moment the end ought to come.  That it will come when it ought, we may be sure; but we waste our time in guessing when that will be.  That it has a meaning we may be sure, but we cannot see it.  When it is over, we may be told.  We are led to expect that the Author will have something to say to each of us on the part that each of us has played.  The playing it well is what matters infinitely.

Thank you Mr. Lewis!  Let us watch and be ready.