Life is uncertain but death is sure is a saying that I heard many years before I started my professional journey in social work. Talking about death was always a bleak subject to me. Who wants to discuss death? Even though the Holy Scriptures speak much about the subject, it is not one of those subjects that the average person is comfortable about discussing. No matter how uncomfortable the subject of death may be, the angel of death has visited all of our homes at some time in our lives. Even as I sit here typing, someone is taking their last breath and a loved one is sad because of the loss. As long as there is a world and people inhabit the land, there will be death. Not only will there be death, but sickness will continue to end in death for many people. While God is a healer, it remains a mystery why some people with certain illnesses live longer and others die sooner. In the midst of the whys and how comes, many things we will not have an answer to until the return of Christ.
With the never ending advances in technology it would seem that there was some magical formula to prevent death, but there has been research and more research and yet death occurs. Death itself is not a new concept because death has been occurring since life and sin in the Garden of Eden. When reviewing Biblical history, it still amazes me how long some of the people lived in the Bible days, but yet eventually they died, with the exception of Enoch, who walked with God and one day he was gone. As we have moved from generation to generation, we have learned new ways to take care of a person who has a terminal diagnosis and has been given a time limit on their life. When I was a child people died at home, but they did not have the comforts that have come into existence for people in the twentieth century. So what has changed? It is called hospice.
—Annie Brown, My Little People: A Social Worker’s Journey
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