Booger McLovin

What do you say to a man who is about to die? The question had never been more real to me than today. His body was nearly transparent, a frame scarcely more than a shadow of life. His skin was the pale color of those I have seen laid in rest, his movements slow, and his words heavy. The first thing he told me, before I had time to measure my own thoughts, was, “I am dying.” So blunt. So honest.

I did what instinct commanded. I asked him, “Are you right with the Lord?” His reply was not hesitant. “Yes.” That word alone gave me courage. I asked if I could pray with him, and he agreed. My words were plain, perhaps too plain. I asked God to let his suffering be light and that he might be ready when God was ready. I did not ask for healing, though I wish now I had. Yet even in my weakness, I remembered that “the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26).

We talked afterwards. He spoke of life, of pain, and even of troublesome neighbors, as though death had not already knocked on his door. He did not seem afraid. He was neither clinging nor bitter, but almost distracted, as if death was a fact written on the margins of his story rather than at its end. And I knew, as he knew, that death is not the end. “For we know that if our earthly tent, which is our house, is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1). The body may break, but the soul in Christ will never be broken.

Before I came to Christ, the thought of such a death would have been terror itself. But faith gives a strange courage. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me” (Psalm 23:4). The sting of death has been drawn out, though its shadow remains. For “the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the Law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:56–57). What is left to fear but pain, and the sorrow of parting from family and friends? Yet even these sorrows will be healed, for God Himself “will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain” (Revelation 21:4).

I left that man with a heart heavy and yet hopeful. Heavy because I feared my prayer was too small, hopeful because his confidence in Christ was not small at all. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; the one who believes in Me will live, even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die” (John 11:25–26). Perhaps the real answer to “What do you say to a dying man?” is this: you remind him of the One who has already died and risen again. You speak less of death and more of life. You pray, even stumbling words, because God makes up what we lack. And above all, you do not leave him alone, for Christ Himself never leaves His own: “I will never desert you, nor will I ever abandon you” (Hebrews 13:5).