Prepared or Unprepared: What Does It Mean?

I was just reading on Yahoo news an Associated Press article about Billy Graham. In an interview with Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, Franklin is quoted as saying, "He's always been ready to die. But nobody's prepared him for getting old." That set me thinking about life, death, being prepared, or unprepared. I am not sure I really know what it means to be prepared or unprepared about living, getting old, or dying.

A few years ago my wife and I did taught some parenting classes. One of the things we often said about parenting was that it is one of the most important roles we will ever have in life, and one for which we have so little preparation. Most of our parenting skills, or lack of them, has, for good or for ill, come from our own experiences of having been parented. We may read books about parenting, but reading books about parenting, even participating in parenting groups, is different from being a parent. We can learn some things from others, things to do; things to avoid doing. Yet, at the end of the day, it is in parenting that we learn what it means to be a parent. Is it similar in being prepared to live, grow old, or die?

Is it in the living of life that we are being prepared to live? Is it in the growing old that we are being prepared to be old? Is it in the dying that we are being prepared to die? There was a time which I could answer with some degree of certainty what it means to be prepared to live, to grow old, or to die. I can do that no longer. I'm not sure that means I have grown any wiser through the years. I think it is more a willingness to admit I do not know.

When I talk about being an old man, I think, in part, this is my way of working through my feelings about aging. Whether I feel it or not; whether I like it or not, I am seventy years old. This is fact. I am no longer a young man. I am no longer a middle aged man. I am chronologically an old man, even if I don't act my age! Given the life expectancy of men in the United States today, I am about thirty years past middle age. For me growing older, or even growing old, is not a bad thing. It is a normal, God-given reality that I am powerless to change. The only thing I can do is decide how I will live my life as fully as possible, given the constraints that being seventy brings. Believe me, I do live my life to the fullest extent possible, willing to try some new things, willing to avoid others and not feel guilty about it.

I cannot say with Billy Graham that I am ready to die. I'm not ready to die. At this point in time I will fight death all the way to the death. I will die. I know that. I do not know when. I do not know how. I do not know where. I only know some day, some where, in some way, I will die. If acceptance of this as reality is being prepared, I guess I'm prepared. And, after death, then what?

Bottom line is that after death I do not know with absolute certainty what follows. I believe, I teach, and I confess, that whether I live or die, I am in the hands of a good and gracious God who has claimed me and named me, and who has promised to never let me go -- not in life; not in death. Is this what it means to be prepared to die? If so, I am prepared to die.

Prepared or unprepared: What does it mean?