Take This Message With You
I read in the morning news an interesting, yet rather pathetic story. It was about a man named Ken McAvoy who was dying of cancer. During the last months of his life, he placed an ad in the newspaper that said for $20 he would deliver any messages people might want delivered “on the other side.” He said in the advertisement, with great confidence, that he “guaranteed” the delivery of any messages from the living to the dead.
After his death, his wife reported that he had received about “thirty odd messages.” She also said that she was confident that he would live up to his word. (No pun intended, I’m sure.) She concluded by saying that these messages were “with him now in the hospital morgue.”
Considering this story, several questions came to mind. Who got the money? Why would he attach a dollar amount to his services, when, where he’s going, dollars buy even less than they do back here! What did the messages say? Why were there so few, only thirty? Then again, isn’t that a lot of people throwing their money away?
After the questions, I considered that the saddest part of the story was his wife’s final comment, “The messages are with him now in the hospital morgue.”
The most important message he could have carried with him into death would not be with him in the hospital morgue, but rather with him now in Paradise. The message of life found in Jesus Christ:
“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26).
