Mortality Checks
Rev. Jerry Hoek
Our family has made many trips back and forth to Michigan since we moved to Tennessee but this most recent one was quite different for us. The trip was for my mother’s funeral and so this became a trip filled with questions of mortality – our parents’ and our own. There were many “what if” questions. What if one of us dies, what would the other do? More specifically, if one of us dies now, where would we be buried? Such was the nature of much of our conversation on this trip.
After we discussed this for a while, I made the comment that this had to be a rather dreary conversation. At that point, our son Matt was riding in the front with me and he simply said, “It’s a mortality check.”
That phrase summarizes the past month for me. This has been a month of mortality checks. My mother passed away at the full age of 89; yet it was a reminder as well that she was mortal. As I sat in the funeral service, I looked at the photograph of my mom and dad taken 25 years ago. That is the picture I have of them etched in my mind. They are happy and content and very much alive. Yet they are both now in heaven.
A few days later we received word that a cousin of mine had also died just a few days after my mom. Another mortality check. The father of a dear church friend dies unexpectedly and Claire’s co-worker is confronted with terminal cancer. More mortality checks.
Yet none of this should surprise us. God puts our mortality in clear perspective in Psalm 90. Read these words once again.
Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.
Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
You turn men back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, O sons of men.”
For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.
You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they are like the new grass of the morning –
though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered.
We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation.
You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.
All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan.
The length of our days is seventy years__ or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
Who knows the power of your anger? For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.
Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Relent, O LORD! How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants.
Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen trouble.
May your deeds be shown to your servants, your splendor to their children.
May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us — yes, establish the work of our hands.
We are mortal. We are indeed made from dust and it is to dust that we will return. That should prompt us to number our days so that we can gain wisdom. Even more our lives should be framed by the last verse. Whatever we have done, whatever we are doing, we should be praying that God will favor us and establish the work of our hands.
Pastor Jerry
June 2006
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