I don’t do reviews, only reflections. So here’s my shot at it:
It is our duty and our privilege to exhaust our lives for Jesus. We are not to be living specimens of men in fine preservation, but living sacrifices, whose lot is to be consumed; we are to spend and to be spent, not to lay ourselves up in lavender, and nurse our flesh. Such soul-travail as that of a faithful minister will bring on occasional seasons of exhaustion, when heart and flesh will fail. Moses’ hands grew heavy in intercession, and Paul cried out, “Who is sufficient for these things?”
-Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, pp. 156-157.
I read that line by Spurgeon years ago and it has always stuck with me. Our goal should not be preservation, but sacrifice. That theme is woven into the heart of the narrative of N.D. Wilson’s new book, Death by Living: Life is Meant to be Spent.
Wilson sees life, all life, not just his own, as a part of God’s story. We are all characters with our own little parts. How will we be involved in the plot? How will we exit the stage?
Chapter 8, ‘The (Blessed) Lash of Time,’ is the gem of the book from my perspective. Wilson compellingly makes the case that death is a blessing, if we have eyes to see it as such. Revelation 14:13 records God’s declaration that those who die in the Lord are blessed:
- Then I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Write: The dead who die in the Lord from now on are blessed.’ ‘Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘let them rest from their labors, for their works follow them!’
We spend our lives fearing death, while, for the Christian, death is the final whistle, the buzz of the clock, that tells us our labors are over. He writes,
Time motivates us. Sure, time counts up, but it is also a game clock, counting down. It is urgent. It makes now matter.
‘Oh, we’ve got all the time in the world,’ says the man preparing to do nothing.
‘This is due tomorrow!’ says the woman suddenly finding focus.
Time is a kindness. We need it. We need loss to appreciate gift. We need the world chanting at us like a crowd counting down seconds at the end of a shot clock. Every day brings its own urgency. Every day has periods that expire, things that count down, and breaks to collect our thoughts, sip Gatorade, and draw up plays.
The sun is up! Get up, get up! Eat. Go, go, go! Eat again…
The grind, The wheel. The racing of rats.
Time, the ever-expiring resource. Time, the thief. Time, the motivator (p. 111).
Here is where the words started hitting me:
Imagine being your flawed self without time…Think about your temper. Your resentfulness. Your lust. Your lies. Your selfishness. Your despair. Think about all the trouble you have on the inside. Think about the weight of that burden…Now remove time.
There is no end to this race. There is no finish line. There is no final round to this brawl. There is no clock counting down.
You must struggle with your temper always. Forever. You will be seven hundred years old, sill a lusting lecher weeping with guilt. A thousand-year-old woman who can’t stop her poisonous tongue.
When young athletes train hard, a good coach is there. When they push themselves to dizziness, to vomiting, a coach is counting down.
You can do it. Just three more. Just five more minutes. Two more laps. You can do this.
And we find that we can. That we can push harder than we ever knew. Because once we have, we will be done.
Imagine running and running and running until your throat burns with welling acid from your gut and constricts with the sharp bursts of cold breaths that your screaming lungs grab an grab and grab to keep your body moving. Your coach is on the side. He shouts,
‘It won’t ever stop! You will never be done. Just keep going.’
Me? I drop right there. Without a finish line, I quit (pp. 111-113).
He continues,
Because of death, we can run the good race. We can fight the good fight. Completion exists…
Seventy years. Eighty if you’re strong. Less if you’re like the Messiah. Look to Him and receive more grace. Stagger on. You can do it. Only a decade more. Or two. Or four. But there is a finish line. There will be an end to the weight on your back and the ache in your skull…Even when we fell, when our first parents defied Him, the first thing He gave them was an end, mortality, a path to resurrection, and the promise of a Guide.
And then He clothed them (p. 113-114).
I appreciated many more things about this book, but I wanted to devote an entire post to this one. I would encourage those so inclined to pick up a copy.
We are living sacrifices whose lives are meant to be poured out. I want to die a worn out man – but a man who wore himself out for the joy set before him. She’s an unlikely source of quotations for me, but Marilyn Monroe (allegedly) once said, ‘I don’t stop when I’m tired. I only stop when I’m done.’ That’s not a bad thought. The good news is that our labors will be done, so we don’t have to stop when we’re tired. Wear yourself out for Jesus, for your husband or wife, for your children, for your church, for the poor, for whomever God puts in your path. The finish line is getting nearer. You’ll make it if you keep your eye on the prize. Your tired, but not done. You’ll be done soon enough. Keep working.
Isaac Watts offers his great paraphrase of Palm 90 in ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past.’ He writes,
Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the op’ning day.
If time is like an ever-rolling stream, then Wilson says, ‘May you leave a wake’:
Drink your wine. Laugh from your gut. Burden your moments with thankfulness. Be as empty as you can be when that clock winds down. Spend your life. And if time is a river, may you leave a wake (p. 117).
This chapter, for the first time in my life, made me genuinely feel ready to die. But more than that, to live to die. I found myself praying, ‘God, thank you that death is coming. I needed to see death as a finish line. Now I know that I can keep going.’ I’ve already found such rest in Christ. I’ve found him to bear the burden of the Law, I found his yoke to be easy. Yet my body wears out. That’s just a reminder that the whistle is in sight: ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on…that they may rest from their labor.’ Amen.
I started the post with Spurgeon, so let me end with him. Here’s a little quote from John Piper about Spurgeon:
He often worked 18 hours in a day. The missionary David Livingstone, asked him once, ‘How do you manage to do two men’s work in a single day?’ Spurgeon replied, ‘You have forgotten there are two of us.’ I think he meant the presence of Christ’s energizing power that we read about in Colossians 1:29. Paul says, ‘I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.’ ‘There are two of us.’
