The back-story to my dad’s death five years ago is told, in part, here. A quote that had made a profound impact on my dad was this:
“Believers may not often realize it, but even as believers we are either centered on man or centered on God. There is no alternative. Either God is the center of our universe and we have become rightly adjusted to him, or we have made ourselves the center and are attempting to make all else orbit around us and for us.”
Dad gladly kept Christ as his personal center, moment by moment. Even my dad’s dying and death were, to him, acts of worship. I did not see him cross a line at any point and start thinking, “This is becoming too difficult. It’s about me now.” He faithfully lived and died adjusting to the Lord as his personal center.
In a way, that humble revering of Christ seems simple. What is Christianity, if not that? But moment-by-moment adjusting to Christ is humble, radically humble, and very costly to our natural sense of how our lives are supposed to go.
The moment of death is not the best time to choose the path of humility before the living Christ. We do not easily find our way to that deep place. The time to start is now. Even this instant.
