Your Last Words

Now and then I've been impressed with their final spoken sentiments.

Often when the time draws near the human heart turns to its deepest concerns. Sadly our second president died a troubled man. He exclaimed: "Thomas Jefferson still survives." In fact his rival died earlier that same day.

P.T. Barnum's last question was "How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?"

Please don't let grudges, income or fame be your concluding concern.

Not everyone gets to prepare for death. "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..." said Civil War General John Sedgwick. "Go away. I'm all right," yelled H. G. Wells at his attendants. Often we lie to ourselves about our supposed firm grip on this life.

Let's turn to those who expressed downheartedness as their last chapter closed.

Winston Churchill sighed: "I'm bored with it all" and Beethoven reputedly groused: "Friends applaud, the comedy is finished." Both men lived a full and gifted life. Neither knew deep satisfaction in the final hours; no joyous expectation of union with God.

How close you live to God today and each day will matter on your last day.

There are even those who remain hostile to the end. Joseph Stalin's sister described how his parting gesture was to raise himself in the bed and shake his fist at some unseen person. Joan Crawford snapped: "Damn it, don't you dare ask God to help me," to her housekeeper, who had begun to pray aloud. There are last minute conversions, but they are few in number. Of course not all our parting words will be at our deathbed.

There's the agony of the parent who tells the preacher how "see you in the morning, mom" rings in her mind as she recalls her dear child leaving the house the night of a D.W.I. fatality.

There are even those words spoken years before we leave this world, but are the last ones in the company of a friend. Paul the Apostle met on a beach with the elders of the church he'd planted at Ephesus. They wept because he'd said that they'd never see him again, but he hoped they'd remember his parting concerns for the welfare of the congregation.

I have become convinced that the purpose of this life is not so much living long, but living well.

How differently President Adams' son, John Quincy, approached his end: "This is the last of earth! I am content." It takes a measured, faith centered life, full of loving relationships to express contentment in the ultimate mile of the way. He reminds me of the 3 last words of President Woodrow Wilson: "I am ready." This meditation reaches its zenith with the greatest three last words ever uttered.

Upon a Roman gallows at a hill they grimly nicknamed the place of the scull, Jesus Christ commended his soul into His Father's hands, groaned loudly and said: "it is finished."

What you think He believed was accomplished at that moment makes an eternity of difference. Buddhism and Islam hold Jesus as a great prophet. They admire His teachings. Humanists exalt His kind deeds and social reformers praise His revolutionary methods. A read through the New Testament however shows how Jesus predicted and embraced His own crucifixion. He saw sacrificial death as the means to pay for humanity's sins.

How sadly arrogant of Him!

Only the God we sinned against could carry that load. How deluded, that a man would think He could give His life as a ransom for sinful souls.

Deluded, I say, unless - unless Jesus was both human and divine.