'Let me just get someone else to have a look at this ...'

Some reactions are just not the reactions you want.  

My wife and I rather (in)famously recall one time that she cut my hair.  It was two days before I was due to preach at a wedding for the first time.  I just wanted it all neatened up a bit.

Anyway, as she's going up the back of my head with the clippers, I hear the words you never want to hear from the person cutting your hair: 'Oh no.'  It turns out she had forgotten to attach a clipper piece at all!  And so she had effectively been shaving a strip of hair from the back of my head.  She'd only realised once the clippers were high enough up the back of my head that she could see below her hands to what was happening.  Hence, the 'oh no.'

Needless to say that was one of the most tense nights in our married life!

Today, though, it was something quite different.  My annual check-up at the dentist.  The teeth are all fine, which is nice.  But then she asks for a new implement, and starts poking around on my palate.  It's a bit tender, but hey, she's sticking something sharp(ish) up into the roof of my mouth.  But then she says the words: 'Let me just get someone else to have a look at this ...'.  

Another dentist comes in.  He agrees that it doesn't look quite right.  Maybe it should be checked out.  She asks to see me again in two weeks.  If it's not different then, she'll send me off to one of her 'esteemed colleagues' for a biopsy.

Of course, we're all trying to be very casual about it.  She's trying not to freak me out, although it's obvious that she thinks there is something there that needs sorting.  I'm also trying to remain calm.  But somewhere along the line, she makes mention of other patients who have had 'mouth cancer'.  I think her point is that whatever my mouth is doing, it doesn't look the same as these other cases, and so she's just being careful.  But by this stage, I'm finding it hard to hear any other words.  

I innocuously ask if there's anything I should read to educate myself.  She emphatically declares 'no'.  At least, not from the internet!

So I go out to make the payment and book my next appointment.  I don't really notice a lot of what the receptionist says.  Internally, my mind and heart are racing.  I can feel an instant jolt of fear.  I want to tell Sarah, but her Bible study group is about to start meeting and I don't want to put her off the ministry she is about to do.

It's strange, though, to see this whole reaction well up so quickly.  At one level, I mustn't get ahead of things.  Nothing has been found, except for something different that needs checking.  It may turn out to be nothing!  But even if it turns out that there is something bad happening inside my mouth, why is it having such a big effect on me?  

As a Christian I've thought about the idea of our mortality so many times.  Surely it shouldn't be having this effect on me.  It just comes up constantly in the Scriptures.  The wages of sin is death.  Man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment.  There is more wisdom in the home of the grieving than the home of the rejoicing, for death is the destiny of all men and the living should take it to heart.   Pastorally, these are such key issues to help people think about.  

And of course, I've taken funerals and sat with the bereaved.  I've watched Christians grieve up close, though not like the rest of men who have no hope.  I've seen non-Christians grieve without hope.  One of those stories is better by far.  There is so much courage in it.  So much hope.  So much faith.  Great sadness, but little despair.

I've thought about the idea of my own mortality so many times, too.  For a long time, I have hoped to think that I would be courageous in faith, rather than fearful and anxious.  I have hoped to think my confidence in Christ, and in the certainty of his bodily resurrection, would triumph over all my fears concerning death.  

I have longed that my final words, my final thoughts, might be of Christ.  I want to say, with Wesley ...

Happy, if with my dying breathI may but grasp his Name,Preach him to all and cry in death,'Behold, behold the Lamb!'

I want to look ahead with Toplady ...

When I soar through realms unknown, bow before your judgment throne,hide me then my Saviour beRock of Ages, cleft for me.

Naturally, I'm sure there would be all sorts of thoughts for Sarah and the boys.  But I hope, too, that my final words to them would be as a Christian more than as a husband or father.

All these thoughts are already fairly well formed.  Their path has been walked down many, many times in my mind.  And yet even after so few words from the dentist, I'm amazed at how dis-ordered my thoughts are, and the stabbing fear in my heart.

Our mortality is, on one hand, the most natural thing in the world.  It happens to every one of us.  There's no surprises here.  Yet, if I'm honest, it's also a great fear.  For it is the opposite of the life that God made us for.  And it brings an end to the relationships we have with loved ones that we hold so dear.  There's nothing good in death.  It robs us of all that is good in life.  

But thanks be to God that even in the face of our fears, the promise of eternal life that comes through Christ is certain and sure!  Whatever happens in two weeks time, may God help me to grow in this confidence, without fear.

Soli Deo Gloria