Gaining Perspective on Life and Death

In the late 1980’s I came to know a young couple in Ottawa who began attending the same church as we did. Jim, a naval officer, and Heather were very serious about their faith in Christ and felt God calling them into full time ministry with the Navigators. They moved from Ottawa to Kingston where they worked for a number of years with students at Queen’s University. Their next assignment brought them to London where they served in the national office of the Navigators, then with Trojan Technologies and finally with Compassion Canada. Jim and Heather formed deep and lasting friendships with a number of people at West London Alliance even though they attended a different church here in the city.

While still several years away from retirement, Jim was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Mainly as a result of our connection in Ottawa some 30 years ago, we would meet for coffee from time to time. As Jim’s cancer spread to his bone and then to various organs and other parts of the body, the pain increased substantially and fortunately, was able to be well managed. Jim underwent the regular chemo and radiation treatments as well as other experimental medications, but to no avail. The cancer continued to grow worse.

We prayed together as well as separately for the Lord to heal Jim. Whenever we would talk on the phone or meet for coffee, Jim always exhibited joy and confidence in the Lord’s grace to him in spite of the cancer and the expectation that he had only a few more months to live here. His outlook caused me to reflect on something Jesus prayed for in John 17:24. He prayed “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world”.

As family members or friends, we consistently ask God to heal our loved ones from whatever disease or accident that has affected them. This is a normal approach for any of us. And we are thrilled whenever God responds to our prayers by healing our loved one, or brings them home safely from Peru in the midst of a pandemic. But God does not always answer our prayers in the way we want. Sometimes God answers the prayer of his Son, by bringing one of us home to see His glory rather than healing our weakened bodies to spend more time here with our families.

Jim went to be with the Lord in late April and he now fully understands why the Apostle Paul preferred to be absent from the body in order to be at home with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8).

Jim and Heather and their family were able to plan a ‘family funeral service’ for Jim including some favourite scripture verses, hymns and a poem entitled “Gone From My Sight”. The wording of this poem captures the essence of the Christian’s hope and perspective. How fitting for Jim, a former naval officer.

Gone From My Sight

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

 Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,

hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.

And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

And that is dying...