Sanctuary Bible Church of Carmel Valley

Information may not be reliable

Cachagua Church will be meeting again on the second and fourth Sunday of each month (4:00 pm).
Come and see what is happening out in Cachagua yourself! It’s an adventure for the whole family. We gather for worship at the Cachagua Community Park “Rock House” at 4pm for worship.

Most of us don’t spend a lot of time thinking about dying. Nor do we consider the myriad of challenges that will face us when a close family member endures a long period of incapacity following an accident or disease that leads to death. But as those who have put our faith in Jesus Christ and who are trusting Him for our eternity we ought to be among the freest to talk about death and the decisions we will face as we or someone we love prepares to depart this place and to step into glory. Still, if we are like so many, we might easily find ourselves completely unprepared to answer the difficult challenges that impending death brings.

Just for a moment try to imagine what it would be like if one evening you are driving home after a dinner party with friends…when suddenly an approaching driver drifts into your lane and you are hit head on. In fact his bright headlights are the last thing you remember before you slip into a coma, only to wake up, totally paralyzed and unable to speak. With multiple broken bones and severe internal injuries your life hangs by a thread for weeks. Eventually you are put on life support systems, several times needing to be resuscitated and after three months…you die. (Too gruesome to consider? Not what you anticipated when you opened up this newsletter?)

Gratefully we don’t have to live in fear of such a possible scenario because even if this were to become our reality, our eternal destiny is sure with Christ, and so is our confidence that God will never ask us to endure more in this life than we by His grace can bear. So, live in dread? No. Yet, this doesn’t remove our responsibility to make reasonable preparations for the days leading up to the time we depart this life to stand before Christ (“for it is appointed unto man once to die, and after this, the judgment…” Heb 9:27). As a pastor I have walked with families through just such difficult life passages and have prayed with friends as they have wrestled through end of life decisions. And I have seen how some of their suffering could be alleviated by healthy family discussions and good advanced care planning.

Just a few of the issues to be considered are advanced medical directives for physicians and health care workers, treatment options when death is near and inevitable, financial arrangements for you and your family, legal considerations for a will or living trust, personal concerns you want to communicate to family members and friends, spiritual convictions you want to pass on to those for whom you care…When these issues are addressed before you are suddenly facing them in a crisis, you then have the freedom to follow through on agreed upon directives with the confidence that the best interests of all are being considered.

This month our Sanctuary Health Ministry team will host a two part seminar in cooperation with the Compassionate Care Alliance to help us be prepared to address these vital concerns. On the Wednesday evenings of October 20th and November 17th during our regularly scheduled Half Time program, members from the Care Alliance and our own health ministry team will lead an information and discussion time, providing us with the tools and guidance needed to help us prepare for death and dying. On hand to help our guided discussion will be a panel including a physician, nurse, lawyer and pastor. Honestly, before I started investigating this I had no idea that such helpful resources are available to us all.

While so much of our lives are rightly given to focusing on living life to the full for God’s glory, a very real part of that living has to do as well one day with dying. It was Moses who gave us God’s perspective on this when he wrote in the 90th Psalm, “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years, yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; for soon it is gone and we fly away…So teach us to number our days, that we may present to Thee a heart of wisdom.”