Faithful to the End

In Hebrews 3, we read a passage of Scripture that encourages us to be faithful to the Lord, holding on to Him with confidence:
13 but exhort one another daily, while it is called "Today," lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
14 For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end...

We are part of a spiritual journey that has no end.  Everyone lives forever; we choose the locale.  For the believer in Christ, we have the promise of eternity with Jesus, and He calls us to live on this earth with a sense of devotion to Him and faithfulness to obey His Word.  He desires for us to exercise our faith in Him and to live a life that reflects His presence in our hearts, guarding against our hearts become hard because of sin and living in the knowledge of the truth and freedom that comes from Him.

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The apostle Paul, knowing that his time on earth was about to end, expressed his attitude in 2nd Timothy 4:
6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand.
7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
8 Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.


A few months ago, I had the distinct privilege of interviewing a young lady who was dying of cancer. You see, she had written a book called, The Hardest Peace, and had a blog called Mundane Faithfulness.  But, she gained national attention after her open letter to another young lady who was dying, urging her not to allow her life to expire on a certain date.



Columnist Cathy Lynn Grossman of Religion News Service wrote:

Kara Tippetts, 38, has died. Metastatic breast cancer took her from her pastor husband, Jason, and their four children on Sunday (March 22).

But in her last years of life, her saga of accepting suffering became, in a quietly powerful way, a cultural force for another way of choosing death with dignity, one that refused to hasten death.

In recent years, the movement for physician-assisted dying has seized the phrase “death with dignity” in its campaign to expand this option beyond the five states where it’s now legal. Compassion & Choices, a leading lobby for this, brought national attention to Brittany Maynard, who chose to die November 1 when she was just 29, by taking a legal lethal prescription rather than lose her mind to an aggressive cancerous brain tumor.

Grossman goes on:

Tippetts wrote an open letter to Maynard in October. It began with gratitude.

I think it is good for our culture to know what is happening in Oregon.

It’s a discussion that needs to be brought out of the quiet corners and brought brightly into the light. You sharing your story has done that. It matters, and it is unbelievably important.

But, Tippetts wrote: “Dear heart, we simply disagree … hastening death was never what God intended.”

Jesus, she told Maynard, “overcame the death you and I are facing in our cancer. He longs to know you, to shepherd you in your dying, and to give you life and give you life abundant- eternal life.”

In this article, Cathy Lynn Grossman writes, "Brittany Maynard had the spotlight for autonomy and defiance. Kara Tippetts takes the spotlight now, in “mundane faithfulness.”



On Wednesday, a post appeared on the blog: "Letter to my readers upon my death."  Kara wrote:

There is so much love in this community I can barely take it all in at times. I have been prayed for, cried over, my story shared over and over. You all can't know the love I have felt from each of you.

It's impossible for me to not imagine coming to this place again to share my heart new with you. It seems impossible that this journey has finally come to an end. But I've done gone and flown away to the land of no more tears- won't you rejoice with me? My pain is gone, my fears are calmed, I'm in the sovereignly good hands of Jesus. He is my forever enough now. What bliss I'm sure I'm enjoying. It's hard for me to separate my feelings for that place and this.

She encouraged prayer for her family and announced that the blog will continue, with the help of friends.



A piece on the WORLD website said this:

Tippetts readily admitted cancer’s tragedy and challenges. And she didn’t pretend it was easy to see God during the hardest days. Her church family not only cleaned her home and helped prepare meals, they also reminded her of the gospel when sickness overwhelmed her.

“Our neediness has become our strength,” Tippetts wrote. “We wake needing God’s grace, Jesus’ presence, and to walk in a way that allows our love to abound more and more. It’s stunning, absolutely stunning, to see a community of the beautifully broken seek daily bread to survive.”

In the midst of suffering, when death is close and despair is a force to be dealt with, God was present and His faithfulness was evident to Kara Tippetts and her family.  And, when it is difficult to see through spiritual eyes, perhaps because the tears are clouding our vision, God can make Himself very real, even in the mundane.   Kara is a reminder that we can bravely face death and know the rejoicing that is on the other side and look for the special treasure of God's abundant grace here on this side.   So, an important lesson that Kara can teach deals with the simple concept of trusting God through the pain.



Another reminder that can come from Kara's story is that death is certain and that we need to be prepared.   The most powerful way is to be certain of where we will spend eternity when we leave this earth.  Just as Kara was not promised the next day of life, neither are way, and it's important that we are certain where we will be when we are taken from this earth.  Only through a relationship with Jesus can we know that we will spend eternity with God in eternity.



Kara was also connected to the power of community.  Her local church family was integrated into the lives of the Tippett family.  The WORLD piece quotes a pastor, who is family friend, Mark Bates, in this excerpt:

And because Tippetts’ cancer journey built authentic community into their church from its start, the church is stronger for it, Bates said. “I wish God had chosen a different way,” he said. “But the church is in a totally different place than it would have been if it had gone according to our plans.”

She was also involved in the community who connected with her through her blog.  We can be reminded of the lifeline that a community of faithful believers can be for each of us.

It is interesting that Kara's letter to Brittany Maynard became an event that brought Kara to national attention.  Her reaching out to Brittany interjected her into a widespread discussion and integrated spiritual truth into the conversation.  Kara continued to write and fulfill God's call for her life until almost the very end.  We can adopt that attitude of allowing God to use us until He calls us home.



Kara Tippetts was a pastor's wife, a mom, an author, and a devoted servant of Christ.  She apparently did not seek the spotlight, she was just faithful to share from her heart.  What an inspiration for our lives as we exercise a desire to be faithful to the Lord.