The sentence of death.

The sentence of death.  It is the tolling bell of everything you had hoped and prayed for.  It is that dark moment when your feet have been swept out from under you and there is only blackness below.  When God and friend vanish, and only the enemy stands before you, ready to swallow you.  It is when all expectant anticipation evaporates, when you have spent everything in pursuit of a goal, only to watch your efforts dissolve into nothing.

Of course, there is little question that God has deserted you: He hasn’t.  But I’ve held this sentence of death within me before, as I feel that I do now.  My whole career feels like a sham, a hoax, a waste.  I’ve poured myself into something I believed good for the sake of Christ, only to watch as it has all come crashing down.  Should I have gone after something else?  Should I have worked harder?  Less time with friends or pursuing ministry?  Well, it’s too late now.  What a waste.  What a failure.  The sentence of death is empty, dark and purposeless.  Bar nothing.

Save one.  2 Corinthians 1:9 tells me that the sentence of death is within me so that I would not trust in myself.  What then am I to trust in?  God who raises the dead.

God.  Not the God of philosophy or the God of tradition.  Not the God of unbalanced love or mercy or compassion.  Not the God of stale theological truth.

God, who breaks into the real world, into the impossible moment when even my own soul has despaired of life, and whispers to me, “You may die, but I raise the dead.”

We love thinking of life in Disney-esque categories.  At the last possible moment, the prince must, we feel, swoop in to save his beloved princess and defeat their mutual enemies, so that they can live together in unadulterated matrimony for infinity hence (or, in a well-known formula, ‘happily ever after’).

But the sentence of death is when there is no happy ending.  There is no ‘happily ever after.’  The prince has failed, the princess is dead and the credits have rolled.  The last possible moment is no longer.  The sentence of death prevails.

Now is the moment when only the one and true God can rescue.  Here is where despair rules, until we, nay, until I embrace the truth that salvation belongs to my God.

O God.  I feel the sentence of death within me.  I am so far beyond anything that I could do to ameliorate my condition.  I am hopeless, but for You.  Save me, O my God.  Hear me.  Save me.  I do not trust in myself.  This is all You.  I have the sentence of death within me.  I am hanging in the balance.  The trapdoor of the gallows has already fallen from beneath me; I am in the short free fall to the end.

But for You.

I have the sentence of death within me, but I do not trust in myself.  I trust in You, O God.

I am close to death.  In a moment, I am dead.  But You raise the dead.