We all are already in the process of making our deathbeds and soon we will lie in them. Thankfully, God will always carry Christians through the valley of the shadow of death. For Proverbs 18:10 promises, The name of the LORD is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe. And Psalm 18:2 emboldens us, The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God [El], my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.
It was 8 a.m. on a Saturday in Southern California while I was settling to watch my four-and-a-half-year-old son play basketball when I received a call from a sister in the Lord, Anne, dying in Minnesota.[1]
We never met, but similar difficult providences had connected us for counsel and we became fast friends. She quickly embraced me and my family with a motherly care that felt like she had been waving with a smile from across our cul-de-sac for decades.
And now, Anne was reaching out for brotherly comfort while lying on her deathbed in hospice. Her speech was slurred, slowing, and sleepy due to medications causing side effects of delusions and anxiety. Not long before, she was only able to reply to my concerned cell phone texts by typing a few empty bubbles.
I was in the midst of studying one of God’s names for a sermon series: El, translated “God,” meaning “The Strong One.” I took Anne to the Lord by this name through prayer and the Word, including Psalm 73:26: My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. And she testified of being strengthened by her El.
We all are already in the process of making our deathbeds and soon we will lie in them. Thankfully, God will always carry Christians through the valley of the shadow of death. For Proverbs 18:10 promises, The name of the LORD is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe. And Psalm 18:2 emboldens us, The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God [El], my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.