What Have You Done for Jesus?

 

A cardiologist who sees many people revived after heart death believes that 50% of near-death experiences are bad ones. So much for the claim you sometimes here that everyone experiences gardens and flowers and a complete lack of judgment. That’s just what we want to believe. He thinks these bad trips are less often reported for obvious reasons: people are reluctant to tell others they have been judged evil and are bound for hell. But immediately after people revive, their reactions are less filtered. Terror is apparent.

We also hear often from hospice nurses of how people approaching death have visions of dead loved ones welcoming them to the next world. And we hear how comforting these are. But one study suggests that 30% of them are not comforting, but disturbing.

These are things we do not want to hear. But they conform with the wisdom of the ages. 

One man studying medicine when he had a “near death experience” was confronted by a figure in white whom he understood to be Jesus; and the figure asked him, “What have you done with your life? What have you done for me?”

And he was told that studying to be a doctor did not count.

What are we supposed to do with out lives? What does count?

We have written elsewhere of the commission Jesus gave to those he identifies in the Beatitudes as his own: 

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

As discussed elsewhere, “being salty” and “letting your light shine” has to mean the creation of art. Heaven is the New Jerusalem: it is an artifice, a town built on a hill. We build it together with God.

But what if we have no talent?

I came across a letter to Dear Abby recently, from a housewife who laments that she is not actually very good at anything. She has nothing to offer the world, so what is the point of her life?

Surely there are such people. Gifts are gifts; they are given to some, not to all. And God must have a plan for those he does not give gifts as well. Indeed, it must be at least as honourable.

And the mandate for those without talents is perfectly obvious. 

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

That is what all of us “do for Jesus.” Moreover, as the Beatitudes make clear, there is no cause for those without talents to feel mistreated or disfavoured by God. The blessed given talents are given suffering to go with it: poverty, mourning, rejection, spiritual hunger.

Abby gives this distraught housewife just the right advice, and it applies to all of us who might feel our lives are meaningless: get involved in volunteer work with some charity.