Heaven?

HEAVEN?
"When I cease to live on this earth, please do not say I 'lost the battle' to cancer. That could not be further from the truth. No, when that time comes, when I make the transition, it will be a point in time when I have never been more alive." - Greg Murtha

I was introduced to Greg by our mutual friend, John Waldo when cancer entered our lives. Greg was there from the beginning with prayers and words of encouragement.

All our communication was via email/online. I never met him personally, yet I feel like he was in every part of my journey - from diagnosis, through treatments, loss, grief and then living again. And during that time Greg has been waging his own battle with stage IV colon cancer. I cherish the back-and-forth communications we’ve had over the last four years. His view was from the patient. Mine, the caregiver. He talked about his love for Tracey, his wife, his concerns for hers and his son Jackson’s futures. I shared my grief, emptiness and then, hope for the future.

This past year when Robert and I got engaged he rejoiced and sent me the most encouraging message about what he considered were courageous next steps to continue to live well. He’s encouraged my writing and told me multiple times I need to start the formal process of authoring a book as he became laser focused on writing his – “Out of the Blue” – that he just completed and will be coming out in a couple months. It's so easy for me to foolishly think, "I have plenty of time."
But today, as I reflect on the communication we shared and the post he penned, our friendship was one of the many blessings that cancer could not take.

Greg wrote to me in May 2015, when we started hospice: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks, be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul - I Corinthians 15. When I cease to live on this earth, please do not say I “lost the battle” to cancer. That could not be further from the truth. No, when that time comes, when I make the transition, it will be a point in time when I have never been more alive.

And as he grieved with my family and I, he wrote on June 16, 2015, about Michael’s passing and wondered what it would be like to “step across the line from this world into the next.”
Today, he knows. Greg now has the answers to all of life's questions.

There are numerous videos on Greg’s Facebook page of him continuing to share the gospel and be a comforter to those around him while on full oxygen. His writings over the past several years have been honest, direct and thought-provoking. I’m moved to be the testimony to all God has done, is doing, and will do in my life through trials and blessings as Greg has been in his.

While I could write more today… I feel led to share an excerpt Greg sent me from the Chronicles of Narnia the day of Michael’s funeral and the public post Greg penned on Facebook. While I can’t imagine the pure joy Greg feels now, I know the waves of emotions the days, weeks and months hold for his wife, son and family even when they're assured, he is with God. Please hold them in your prayers.

Tracey - in Greg’s own words to me, I believe I can say the same back you – You loved and served Greg well. You are a living-breathing example of how to love, respect and honor your husband and you did so to the end. God bless you and Jackson.

HEAVEN?
-Greg Murtha, June 16, 2015

I wonder what it will be like when we step across the line from this world into the next.
Yesterday a fellow cancer patient, a friend from a far, made the step. Michael Dickinson is no longer living in his cancer-ridden body. He is now in the presence of Jesus. Praise God!
His wife Lori loved and served him well. She is a living-breathing example of how to love, respect and honor your husband and she did so to the end. Relatively, it will be a short time before Lori sees Michael again in eternity.

As I have mentioned before, James mentions the brevity of life in chapter 4, “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

Interesting, not only did Michael enter eternity yesterday but so did Elisabeth Elliot, the wife of missionary and martyr Jim Elliot.

I wonder how that went down.

Jesus greets Michael with a hug and a well done good and faithful servant; then Michael looks over his shoulder and sees Elisabeth. See Elisabeth was a missionary in Ecuador and Michael a banker in Oklahoma. What did they have in common…faith in Jesus…and where did they both end up yesterday? Heaven.

Real faith in Jesus extends life dramatically. Real faith in Jesus is what it is all about anyway.
Will you join me, Michael and Elisabeth in placing your faith in the one who can heal, walk on water, turn water into wine, defeat death and provide a bridge to eternity?

It will be the best decision you ever made.

Amen.

FROM THE LAST SECTION OF THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, C.S. LEWIS
“There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are, as you used to call it in the Shadowlands, dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended. This is the morning.”

And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page. Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.