DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY
the sojourn of David L Lewis
There is an ancient fable of a slave sent to the marketplace by his master. While at the market the slave is startled when he sees the Angel of Death. The slave fears Death is looking for him. He runs back to his master begging to be sent to Madagascar to escape Death. The master agrees, and then goes down to the market to directly confront Death. “Why did you scare my slave?” the master demands. “I’m sorry,” Death replies, “it is just that I was surprised to see him here in the market. I have an appointment with him tonight in Madagascar.”
It
was 1961. I was eighteen. Had myself a brand-new, fresh off the
showroom floor Buick convertible with V-8 engine. It had an
indescribably beautiful green-blueish color never seen again. In
those days the speed limit was 70-mph. I was doing at least that.
Suddenly I knew, knew without doubt, that Death was in the back seat.
All I had to do was look back, even into the mirror, and he would
take me. It was real. So real that I moved my foot from the gas to
the brake pedal. As I did ‘we’ reached the top of a hill. Just
over that hill was an old black pickup truck without lights stalled
on the highway. Having started to slow down, I was prepared to and
able to stop. From that moment to this I have always believed for
those few seconds Death took a Holiday -- or maybe missed an
appointment.
Death Takes A Holiday comes from a story of Angel of Death taking human form to find out why humans fear him so. The story has been used in several movies and its plot appears in various venues. In version I remember when Death takes his holiday there is no death anywhere on earth for his holiday period. Not sure how that would work. As my mother once said, ‘nothing lives if nothing dies.’
If you’ve lived long enough, and have an honest perspective on the life you lived, most likely there have been one or more times when death took a holiday regarding you; or at least missed an appointment, for the moment. Know there were a few times in my long life when appointments were missed unawares. John Lennon was only half right, both death and life "is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans". As my sister Diane says, “Death is not the scary part. It is the steps we take that scare us, not death itself.”
Death may take a holiday, or we may have simply missed an appointment. But, the overwhelming weight of statistical evidence leads inevitably to incontrovertible conclusion all that lives must die.
Death does have a reasonable question to ask, though: If death is inevitable, why, throughout the history of man on earth, have people always feared death? More to the point, why do Christians, who profess to long for and expect eternal award, fear death? Why do ardent Christians not readily identify with what the apostle Paul wrote: For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21)?
There is a debate in Theology/Philosophy as to whether death is Predestined or Random? Is the day you will die “written’ and certain? Or, is it really just random, an appointment which can be changed as circumstances change? Don’t have final answer to the question, but do think the great fear is not the certainty of death. The great fear is that death comes to man at such random, unpredictable intervals. When all is said and done, everyone knows they must certainly die, but nobody really believes it.
And so, being of a certain age, and having missed my share of appointments, find myself wondering what people might say of this life I’ve lived. A life which must inevitably end on some date either certain or yet to be appointed. Won’t be there to find out what tales may be told, but these are the things I would want said:
Faithful to his one wife without waver
Cared more for his children than himself
Did what he honestly believed God gave him to do
Sojourned on this earth as it is appointed to mankind
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