Yesterday I visited a dying woman at the hospital.\u00a0 I do this sort of thing pretty regularly these days as a hospice chaplain.\u00a0 Her daughter was there, tearful but steady.<\/p>\n
She said her family was Christian and that they were grateful in times like these for “salvation.”\u00a0 She choked up when I asked whether she had given her mother permission to go.\u00a0 Mom, she said, was probably lingering because she didn’t want her daughter to be saddled with all the final arrangements she was leaving behind.\u00a0 But that word “salvation”\u2014much as it does often at the bedsides of dying persons here in the South\u2014had hovered in the room as soon as she said it.<\/p>\n
Funny thing, the way we can talk about salvation sometimes.\u00a0 In some circles, I hear the term as if it’s just another checked box on a long list of Christian-sounding jargon.\u00a0 But at the bedside of this dying person, “salvation” took on real meaning.\u00a0 For this woman, salvation meant she didn’t have to be quite so afraid of death, and that she would be reunited with her mother some day in paradise.\u00a0 Sure, she was still grieving, and she was still scared, but the grief, if pure, wasn’t unabated.<\/p>\n
What kills me, pun intended, is the way most<\/em> of us who believe the fundamental Christian truth that we’ll one day be resurrected can seem to relegate salvation to deathbed wishes.\u00a0 What if we actually lived our lives with this assurance, so that death really had no sting?<\/p>\n In our relationships and places of work?<\/p>\n In our churches?<\/p>\n At the gym?\u00a0 100 lb dumbbells? Yes!<\/p>\n But seriously, deathbed wishes can be life-in-the-main ones, can’t they?<\/p>\n How does a promise of salvation change the way you live your life today?\u00a0 Come to think of it, would a series on salvation (what it means, its theological history, etc) be helpful? You can send me your thoughts at kristinarobbdover@gmail.com or drop them in the comments section below.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday I visited a dying woman at the hospital.\u00a0 I do this sort of thing pretty regularly these days as a hospice chaplain.\u00a0 Her daughter was there, tearful but steady. She said her family was Christian and that they were grateful in times like these for “salvation.”\u00a0 She choked up when I asked whether she…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":461,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116,26,21,2162],"tags":[2168,2165,2142,2166,2164,2167],"class_list":["post-5149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-death","category-disciples","category-resurrection","category-salvation-2","tag-deathbed-wishes","tag-end-of-life-preparations","tag-grieving-the-death-of-a-loved-one","tag-hospice-chaplaincy","tag-meaning-of-salvation","tag-pastoral-care-to-the-dying"],"yoast_head":"\n