I know a friend who died in August. He endured a rare cancer for years, yet was one of those always-moving-forward people, always giving. An encourager of others going through their own valleys of the shadow of death.

For him, dying was also going to God. I want to be like that. There’s something I remember experiencing in cancer and that whole ugly ordeal that I haven’t easily replicated: a surety that my life is entirely out of my hands. Entirely IN God’s.

These days I live like my life is at least decently in my hands, and my decisions – about everything from the route I drive to my pandemic responses to whether I buy organic to how I order my day – have more to do with my will than with God’s sovereignty.

Believe what you will about predestination or whatever else, but if you believe in Jesus, you have accepted that God had and has a plan to make all things new. To heal, to restore, to judge, to be glorified. And you have hopefully accepted that to follow Him does not mean you won’t suffer, or die. But it does mean that He will never leave you, and you will be with Him forever.

So I’m giving us a challenge to greet the Lord every new morning with this breath, as Jesus ended His earthly life:

Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit.

I AM the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet he shall live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.

John 11:25

Rest in the peace of God’s undimmed presence, Matt. You are loved.