Richard Branson’s few exhilarating minutes on the threshold of space? I had more yesterday. Driving toward St. Louis, heavy fog was over the Mississippi River, not unusual, but the music on the radio put me into thoughts of my own eventual space journey. “Deep River, my home is over Jordan. Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.” I was headed to the hospital for an MRI.
This was my third MRI, so I knew the drill and wasn’t, am still not fretting over what the results might be. After all, I do know my future, though the exact details are like crossing the river, foggy. Three stabs before they could get the IV in. Does this happen to all older people? A few minutes later I’m on the tray, ready to be slid into the tube. Technician Megan, asks, “Do you have any questions before we hook up the power injector and get going?” Uh, the “power injector”? Does Richard Branson have a “power injector”? Turns out it had something to do with shooting dye into my veins.
For the next 45 minutes I was relaxed, listening to classical music but also thinking ahead to that time when my body will be laid out after my spirit has taken its flight into eternity. Not being morbid here! Thoughts in that narrow space made me realize how precious life is, and why we believe in “eternal” life. Lying still the whole time, I broke into a big smile when Handel’s Hallelujah chorus played in my headset. “The Kingdom of this world / Is become / The Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and of His Christ. / And He shall reign forever and ever.”
“My home is over Jordan,” foggy though the details may be. “If we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (Romans 6:8). “The last enemy to be destroyed is death. This perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality…. Then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ …Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:26, 53-55, 57). What a journey awaits us!
Comments