Shalom Aleichem...
Reflections is a weekly Christian Teaching Ministry. Each week we will talk about the Bible and lessons we can put to use in our daily life. We will try to, on a weekly basis, provide to you stories, thoughts, and just easy ways to live your life on a straight path.
THIS WEEK'S TEACHING....October 28, 2019
This is the second half of a teachinng we began last week....This week, we touch on the three areas of pain in End of Life situations.
The first is the easiest–physical pain. I have experienced this three times. Once I fell from a three storey building and broke my back and shifted the whole spine. The other was with my wife in our third miscarriage. The other was with my daughter, Alison, after her second kidney surgery. She went through spasms that lasted 24 hours a day for three days. It is easier to experience excruciating pain than to see a loved one go through it. You can deal with your own pain, but you are helpless to deal with someone else’s pain.
Through these experiences, I learned something that was saddening. That is the fundamentalism within the medical profession that one-size-fits-all when it comes to pain medication. Alison was allowed to suffer tremendous pain because a label on a bottle said, “Once every six hours.” The medical profession fails to take two things into account: One, everyone’s threshold of pain is different. Two, everyone’s metabolism is different. Some people will go through pain medication very quickly and they need more. Some people process it very slowly and they don’t need as much.
There are a lot of issues the medical profession has to deal with, but the answer is not to take a person’s life when dealing with pain. That is one answer that is being offered today. The answer is simply to reform the medical profession. Twelve years ago I worked in a teaching hospital and I was told at that time that we have all the medications needed to keep people from experiencing excruciating pain. All we need to do is teach doctors how to administer this medication. That’s the remedy, not the taking of a person’s life but to educate ourselves and reform the medical system on this issue of pain management.
We need to have doctors working with us that we know and who know us because doctors can regulate pain medication when they know your history. It is important for us to develop a long-term relationship with a doctor.
When you are with a loved one who is near the end of his or her life and they slip into a rhythmic pattern of breathing, it can seem very painful. All the studies performed about this, however, tell us that it is not. The person is uncon-scious and is absolutely pain-free. By the grace of God, they could be in heaven, or they could be experiencing their most cherished memories in life, or they could be walking with Jesus. If you choose to be with your loved one until the very end and you experience the very intense, noisy sounds of the body shutting down, realize that the person is pain-free and unconscious.
What do we do about emotional pain? This can be caused by grief, by the sights, sounds and smells of a hospital. So often we see the IV’s and the bruises and the illness and we think this looks painful, but it is not. I put a glass through my hand one time and have the scars from it. Every time I look at the scar, I feel pain but my hand does not hurt. It is not real pain but emotional pain. There are the feelings of regret and of being a burden to a loved one. There is the pain of imagining what they are going through and the pain of the unknown.
Is it right to put our loved one to sleep so that they can avoid this issue of emotional pain? No. The answer is to listen to the alarm that is going off in your heart and in your mind and discover the root cause of it. Learn from this, allow God to teach you from it, and allow Him to heal us.
The Apostle Paul experienced physical pain and he asked God to take it away. And God said no. II Corinthians 12: 7-10 tell us why, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness so that Christ’s power may rest on me. For when I am weak, there I am strong.” Paul learned to rely upon God through his suffering.
Jesus in Hebrews 5: 8-9, said, “Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered. Once made perfect, he became the source of eternal life for all who obey him.” Even our call to worship reminds us that God experienced suffering through Jesus and he learned to be sympathetic towards us.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross stated that grief is an emotional pain and that we have something to learn in all five stages. If we allow ourselves to learn, we will come to a point of acceptance and absolute perfect peace. The answer to emotional pain is to face it and to learn from it.
The last pain we will deal with is spiritual pain. For those who advocate the taking of a life or the taking of one’s own life, it comes down to this issue. This is the cloud of fear and dread, the dark sky we feel within our soul when we talk about our mortality. Is the answer to avoid the question, “What about God, what about the afterlife, what about Heaven, what happens when I die?” In his book, Scott Peck describes a woman named Victoria. She was a dignified woman who was well off who gave instructions that near her death she wanted her family to be with her while she took sleeping pills and died. What stands out in this story is the fact that she did this with the motivation to avoid physical pain, but the reality was that she didn’t experience much physical pain. She did experience “excruciating, humiliating effects from chemotherapy.”
The family had advocated the taking of one’s life, but they said this after the experience: “The fact is that a suicide is a suicide, over-determined, sad and somewhat toxic. It touches everyone. It is a let-down.” As a result, none of the family members have been able to talk about their mother’s death since.
The most troubling thing about this whole issue of avoiding death and dying is the fact that people leave God out of it. Peck says, “When we die, this is a powerful business and it is here at last that we are beginning to discover our heady domain.” The question is, is it really our domain? When you take your life, you are saying in effect that it is your soul and there is no giver of it. This denies God. Peck picks up on this later in his book, saying:
“There are two reasons I am critical about euthanasia. One is distinctively theological and relates to all suicide in general. As our creator and nurturer, God is as much a shareholder in our lives as we are ourselves. As creatures with free will, we have the power to kill ourselves. Whether we have the ethical and moral right to do so is a different matter entirely. Through the act of suicide, one sets the limits of one’s death without reference to the life giver. This is a denial of God and of God’s relationship with the soul. To kill oneself in order to avoid the existential suffering of aging and dying is to short-change oneself of that learning. It is also, I believe, to short-change God who designed us for such learning.”
What’s the answer then? When that spiritual alarm goes off, we need to seek God’s answers to this question. If you get your house in order, it is a very beautiful thing. Time and time again, when a person discovers God in their live, it is a beautiful passing.
What have we learned so far? We have learned that there are many types of pain and it is important for us to be clear about the type of pain. Pain is a warning light to remind us that something needs to be fixed. We shouldn’t neglect it or run away from it. We need to seek solutions. For physical pain, it is pain medication. For emotional pain, it is a counselor or perhaps a pastor. For spiritual pain, it is God’s promises to us.
I would like to conclude by giving you God’s answer to this issue of spiritual pain. “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you and brought you close to himself by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight without blemish and free from accusation if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and not moved from the hope held out in the gospel.”
Jesus said in Matthew 11:28, “Come unto me all who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart. You will find rest for your soul.”
Is your soul troubled about this issue? If so, come to Jesus and give him your burdens.
DID YOU EVER WONDER???
IF I HAD MY LIFE TO LIVE OVER
I would have talked less and listened more.
I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded.
I would have eaten the popcorn in the 'good' living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.
I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth.
I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.
I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.
I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains. I would have cried and laughed less while watching television - and more while watching life.
I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband.
I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day.
I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn't show soil or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.
Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.
When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now go get washed up for dinner."
There would have been more "I love yous"... more "I'm sorrys"...but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute... look at it and really see it...live it...and never give it back.
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In memory of Erma Bombeck who lost her fight with cancer. "Be courageous and bold. When you look back on your life, you'll regret the things you didn't do more than the ones you did."
BOOKS OF THE BIBLE...A TEACHING
Last week we began a several month long trip through the Bible, verse by verse. As we have already begun our Old Testament Bible Study, this series might help you understand the Scripture better....We continue this week....
The First Violent Act
Genesis 4
The man, “Adam” (from adamah, meaning “earth”), and his wife Eve have two children, Cain and Abel. Abel is a shepherd, while Cain is a farmer.
One day they each decide to bring an offering to the Lord. Cain brings some of his fruit, while Abel brings the choicest animals from his flock.
The Lord accepts Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s. What does this mean? That God is no vegetarian? The meaning is certainly not clear. The Hebrew word sha’ah means to gaze steadily, or in this context, to look upon with favor. Why does God regard one and not the other?
We have only two clues. First we are told that while Cain simply made an offering, Abel took from the best of what he had. Perhaps his gift was heartfelt, while Cain’s was perfunctory. But we also have Cain’s reaction to the event, which gives the clearest indication he was not in a spiritual frame of mind.
Cain tricks his brother, inviting him for a friendly walk in the field, then turns on him and kills him. This is the next in the series of great separations: the estrangement between man and woman is followed by the estrangement between brother and brother, leading even to violence and death.
God calls Cain to account and condemns him to a life of wandering. The ground upon which he shed his brother’s blood will no longer yield to him its produce. Nevertheless, God sets upon Cain a special mark to protect him from retaliation.
A curious question will surely occur to the reader: If Cain and Abel were the only children of Adam and Eve, and Abel is dead, then who is Cain afraid of? Soon we also read that Cain got married - yet no female offspring of Adam and Eve was ever mentioned. Clearly Cain and Abel are more than just two individual human beings. They are archetypes, symbols of human nature and passion. They have much to do with all of us.
Now Cain had many descendants, and one in particular is worthy of note. His name was Lemekh, and he represents a further increase in the growing estrangement between human beings. His ancestor Cain was frightened by the consequences of his violent act. But Lemekh, who kills a man himself, brags about it to his two wives. If Cain is to be avenged seven times, surely he, Lemekh, will be avenged seventy-seven! We have now reached the separation between strangers. Those who are not a member of one’s own clan are often naturally considered enemies.
We have moved a long way from the perfect creation of Genesis 1. Humanity has become at odds with itself and has descended into barbarism. There is no longer any sense that God is near. And so we read that at this time “people began to call upon the name of the Lord.” People now experience themselves so far away from God that they must try to reach God through prayer.
HAVE A SAFE AND BLESSED WEEK:)
Ho'omaikaʻi ka Pua iā kākou