On Hearing of the Death of a Friend*

My heart has gone out to all of you during the past few weeks as first Beanie and then Ben were stricken with accident and stroke in turn. I can empathize with you, knowing the closeness of the community—the larger family—there on Pitcairn. Ben didn't just belong to Irma and their children, but to everyone else on the island—as brother, cousin, uncle, or friend. Everyone will miss him.

I haven't seen Ben nor talked to him—or even written to him—since leaving Pitcairn. Not because I chose to be separated, but merely because there didn't seem to be any apparent need for communication. And yet the knowledge of his existence on the island, and the occasional story of something he did or said, filled a need in my heart for continued fellowship with Ben.

But now he's gone. I believe I knew him well enough to say, quite plainly, that I expect to share the New Jerusalem with him. There's a peace in my heart that comes from that knowledge—a peace that prevents hopeless despair. And yet, as distant as I am from the island, I shall miss Ben—miss knowing that he's there, that he still leads his household and his church.

Please carry to Irma and her family my personal sympathies. I know I already told you to do that. But perhaps you could read to them the lines above about how I feel toward him. And tell them that I'm praying every day that God will give them strength to remain faithful to Him during this hour of grief. Read to them Isaiah 41:10: "Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness."
 

I enjoyed your mention of the white terns, calling in the night, and realize the importance of coming to grips with death and dying. Somehow in my mind I link the two—the terns and death. Terns are very much alive, flying relentlessly, searching for food and caring for their young. They remind me of the work of the Holy Spirit, calling us to repentance while we live, caring for us in countless ways of which we are not aware.

But terns and people come to the end of days. Dying is a part of life we dare not overlook, for it marks a moment that sets for all time to come the type of character we shall have in God's house. Up to the point of death (or, as in the case of some diseases, until we lose the ability to reason), we have the ability to choose good from evil—to choose to follow Christ, or to selfishly go our own way. But that choice is set at death. If we've made the right choice, then death is merely a holding tank where we await the resurrection—with no awareness of time, or space, or our own condition. Then when Jesus comes he will call us from our graves, He'll wake us up to a new life—a life lived with the character we chose to have before we died.

An Egyptian guide once told a friend of mine—while they looked at the mummy of Pharaoh Rameses II in a Cairo museum—"He believed that this life is so short in comparison to the life to come, that he should spend all of this life preparing for the next." We may not agree with the religion of the Pharaohs—and God didn't either. But you'd have to admit that we should have the same attitude toward life and death as they did.

Isaiah gives the finest words of comfort for the Christian:

Isa 57:1, 2 The righteous perish, and no one ponders it in his heart; devout men are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death.

*A letter I sent to my friends on Pitcairn Island on hearing of the death of Ben Christian, Island Secretary and lead elder of the church.