Psalm 116:15 Precious in the sight of the Lord
    is the death of his faithful servants.

This verse is very famous, but I think it is greatly misunderstood. I think the misunderstanding comes from combined human weaknesses. In the first place, we tend to fear death. People will go to enormous lengths to try to avoid it, even though it is inevitable. The second problem is human greed. If something is precious, we want more of it, so we read this as God wanting more of His saints to die! The third issue is the word, precious. For many people today, that word brings up images of Golum in Lord of the Rings, muttering about the One Ring as “my precious.” That’s not wrong (Tolkien was a very careful wordsmith) but it still misses the point. “Precious” means not simply value, but importance and emotional connection. Put very simply, this verse says that God never takes the death of one of His children lightly; it is a matter of great significance. On one level that seems rather odd, because for the believer, death is simply a transition from this world to the next, but then, we treat other transition points, such as graduation or marriage, as being of great significance. I think it helps in understanding this verse to contrast it with the attitude of some governments toward death. It was Stalin who said, “Five deaths is a tragedy. Five million deaths is a statistic.” Dictatorial regimes have always been casual with the lives of their subjects, seemingly forgetting that if everyone dies, there’s no one to rule over! God is the opposite of that, caring deeply about each individual, and we should rest in that assurance.

I have long had a somewhat unusual relationship with death, and I’m not entirely sure why. Part of it comes from being steeped in the Gospel from my birth, and thus having a solid assurance that this life isn’t the end. I don’t think I ever saw a dead human body before that of my grandmother, when I was in college. I was quite familiar with death itself, since my family always had pets, and so I knew well what grief was. Also, I killed countless frogs, lizards, and snakes as I was growing up, since our house was in a rural area at that point. (I didn’t think insects counted.) As a pastor, I have lost count of how many people I have “seen off,” though some stand out in my memo­ry. Right now, we are essentially waiting for when the Lord says, “It’s time,” for one 87-year-old lady. The longer I live, the more I am convinced that the most important question about death is whether we have fulfilled the purposes for which God put us here in the first place. Do we have a close relationship with Him? Have we done the things that He prepared for us to do? (Ephesians 2:10) If the answer to those two questions is yes, then physical death is something to be looked forward to, and I do (though I’m not in the least suicidal). My biggest purpose is in bringing as many people as possible to the repentance and faith that will give them the same assurance I have.

Father, thank You for this timely reminder. I do pray for that lady and for her son. I pray that everything about her passing, whether it is today or years from now, would be exactly as You have planned, for their blessing and as a testimony to Your grace and faithfulness. Thank You. Hallelujah!