Packed up and ready to go

We have two friends who have recently given birth to children with congenital heart defects. One child has hypoplastic left heart, and is about six months old, and the other has trisomy 18 (one of the effects of which is hypoplastic left heart). It has been hard and good to love and pray for these families as they love their children.

The second family, the Fahmers, know that their son's time is likely very short; only 5% of children with their son's condition live past their first birthday. They have started a blog about their experiences, which I hope will bring Light to parents of terminally ill children - and parents of healthy children.

Last night as Rebecca and I talked about these two hard situations, I thought of J.I. Packer's words in his introduction to A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of Christian Life:

"[T]he Puritans have taught me to see and feel the transitoriness of this life, to think of it, with all its richness, as essentially the gymnasium and dressing-room where we are prepared for heaven, and to regard readiness to die as the first step in learning to live . . . . [T]heir medicine and surgery were rudimentary; they had no aspirins, tranquillisers, sleeping tablets or anti-depressant pills, just as they had no social security or insurance; in a world in which more than half the adult population died young and more than half the children died in infancy, disease, distress, discomfort, pain and death were their constant companions. They would have been lost had they not kept their eyes on heaven and known themselves as pilgrims traveling home to the Celestial City. . . . Few of us, I think, live daily on the edge of eternity in the conscious way that the Puritans did, and we lose out as a result. For the extraordinary vivacity, even hilarity (yes, hilarity; you will find it in the sources), with which the Puritans lived stemmed directly, I believe from the unflinching, matter-of-fact realism with which they prepared themselves for death, so as always to be found, as it were packed up and ready to go. Reckoning with death brought appreciation of each day's continued life, and the knowledge that God would eventually decide, without consulting them, when their work on earth was done brought energy for the work itself while they were still being given time to get on with it. (pp 13-14 emphasis mine)

I think families like the Fahmers can be contemporary Puritans to us, helping us to live daily on the edge of eternity, "packed up and ready to go," whether we and our children are robust and healthy, or terminally ill. May God grant us grace to see His face and live with vivacity, hilarity and energy while He gives us breath.