The words came through but didn’t quite register.

At exactly 1:47 on Tuesday afternoon an email arrived announcing that my father had died—”please pray for the family.”  But before I ever saw the email, my son Tim called and asked if I’d heard the “news.” 

Something wasn’t adding up, so I placed a quick call to the email source (a wonderful family friend) and learned that they had made an error in identifying the deceased.  The lost loved one in question was actually my aunt.   A follow up email was immediately sent out to correct the error.

Obviously, we are sad for the family of Dad’s sister.  They have lost a caring mother and there is a hole in their family that will never again quite be filled.  And Dad, of course, has lost a sister.  The day previous we’d paid our respects at the funeral home. 

Still, it was strange to think that others were now thinking someone was dead who was actually fully alive (these things have a way of taking a while to get sorted out).   But Dad is hardly the first to be mistaken for dead.

In May of 1897, American humorist Mark Twain was traveling in London when someone started the rumor that he had become gravely ill and died.  When questioned by a reporter about the story, the much-mustached Mark Twain quipped, “The reports of my deaths are greatly exaggerated.”

I couldn’t resist texting my Dad, “How does it feel to have been declared dead—and come back to life on the same day?”  His response is choice.  He simply quoted Paul:

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

The sobering truth is, whether our death announcement is premature—or on time—we shall all have one eventually.   But followers of Christ need not let this sobriety check send us into a dark funk.  Why?  Our lives here are but shadows.  We shall have all of heaven and all of Jesus for all of eternity!  Allow me to quote again from Paul who said,

For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.   —Romans 14:8,9

I belong to Christ.

Christ belongs to me.

Everything else—even death—is pocket change.