I was visiting a man as he lay dying, his death only a couple of days away. I asked him there at the end what he was feeling. Was he fearful?
“Fear? No,” he responded, “I’m not fearful because of my faith in Jesus.”
“We all have hope that our future is in God’s hands,” I said, somewhat piously.
“Well, I’m not hopeful because of what I believe about the future,” he corrected me, “I’m hopeful because of what I’ve experienced in the past.”
I asked him to say more.
“I look back over my life, all the mistakes I’ve made, all the times I’ve turned away from Jesus, gone my own way, strayed, and got lost. And time and again, he found a way to get to me, showed up and got me, looked for me when I wasn’t looking for him. I don’t think he’ll let something like my dying defeat his love for me.”
There was a man who understood Easter.
--Bishop William Willimon
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