Never In Vain

As soon as I walked into his hospital room, I knew he was dying. I tried not to notice his labored breathing or his yellowed and swollen skin.

Six weeks earlier his doctors diagnosed colon cancer. On further examination they found another tumor in his left lung. A CT scan uncovered suspicious spots on his liver.

“Hi Dan,” I choked back tears. “How are you feeling?”

He opened his dark, sunken eyes, turned his head and tried to smile.

“Tired,” he whispered. “Good to see you.”

It had been nearly five years since Dan and I were last together. My job change and move across country ended our weekly chats. When he and I spoke on the phone during the past Christmas, no one could have known it would be his last earthly
celebration of Christ’s birth.

As I watched him struggle for air, my mind drifted to the time he shared with me the story of his conversion. He’d been raised an agnostic, educated in the most prestigious schools and trained as a clinical psychologist. He could have easily dismissed the emptiness gnawing at his heart as irrational foolishness. The idea that sin could be the root of his void was as foreign to his humanistic world view as east is from the west.

But when the Holy Spirit revealed to him the truth about sin, forgiveness and salvation, Dan suddenly knew he had to make a choice: bow to God or hide behind human philosophies.

He chose God, and from that moment, devoted his life to the cornerstone of God’s truth: Jesus Christ.

Twenty-two years later, his body weakened by cancer, yet his faith remained powerful. As he had done for the last two decades of his life, he asked everyone who would listen, “Do you know my Jesus? Do you know my savior?”

Once, during the few days we spent together in his hospital room, I asked him, “Dan, how does it feel to know you are dying?”

My question was deeply personal for me. I learned long ago that a hospital room is where everything we hold dear to ourselves washes out: money, popularity, passions, careers -- like charred timbers after a house fire, a death-bed places so many things in clear perspective. I needed to know the thoughts of this man of God. Perhaps his answer might help me cope during that future time when I lie in some hospital bed, staring into eternity.

He raised his hand to the bed-rail and touched mine.

“From life . . . to life,” he smiled. “I leave this one to enter the next with Jesus. I fought the good fight. I finished my course. I kept the faith.”

I placed my other hand atop his and let his words seep into my spirit. As was always true in our relationship, the thoughts I shared with him never approached the wisdom he shared with me.

We buried Dan a few days later. A chilled November wind whipped across the southwest Missouri cemetery. Rust-orange leaves carpeted the frozen dirt at our feet. And as the final words of eulogy drifted from the graveside, Dan’s last words to me filtered once again into my memory, “fight the good fight, finish the course, keep the faith.”

Dr. Daniel V. Taub illustrated how the Holy Spirit can use a child of God, even from a death-bed, to minister grace to anyone with ears to hear. Serving his Savior until his last breath, my friend’s simple eloquence reminded me that our labors for Christ are never in vain .


Lord, it's easy to become discouraged, to believe I'm failing you, that am not producing fruit for you. Please remind me during those times that my labor, whatever it might be, is never fruitless when done to honor you. Amen.

Rich
RNmaffeo@aol.com