The Death of Me

Have you ever heard and exasperated parent sigh to an over-adventurous child, "You'll be the death of me yet" as she drags that rambunctious little tyke back from yet another attempt to climb, jump or jet one place or another?  Have you ever been under so much stress at work that you thought to yourself, "This job is killing me"?  Have you ever wondered, with all the wrecks on the road, chemicals in our food, toxins in our air and radical Islamic nut jobs breathing death to everyone, just how long can you survive anyway?

Have you ever faced or are you facing something that causes you to muse, "This could be the death of me"?  It not a very settling thought, is it?  Even if you do not fear death in particular, the prospect of it can rattle us a bit.  As cowboy laureate Will Rogers once quipped, "It's not that I'm afraid to die, it's just that I've been alive as long as I can remember and I don't like change."

Death is the ultimate and irreversible change in this life, and it tends to be faced with trepidation if not downright fear.  To even begin to think of a world without "me" is difficult.  It's hard to imagine everything going on without me.  My hopes, my dreams, my goals -- these things seem so invaluable that they just can't simply come to an end.

And yet, that is precisely what the call of Jesus demands of us, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matt 16:24).  And lest we think that calling is anything less than the death of me, listen closely to the words of the Spirit through the apostle Paul: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me..." (Gal 2:20).

Part of counting the cost of being a follower of Jesus Christ is that it will be "the death of me."  I cannot continue pursuing my hope, my dreams, my goals unless they are aligned with and support His.  It is no longer my life, a life that was "...buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life" (Rom 6:4).

While I struggle with the old me trying to come back like a personal Zombie Apocalypse, my hope, my dream, my goal today is that my faith results in the total and complete death of me and the full, overwhelming indwelling of Christ's Spirit.  Jus' Say'n.