Hi Friends,

My season of being insanely busy is mostly behind me so I’m hoping to do a lot more writing. I’ve been brainstorming ideas and I always have more topics than I have time for, but I want to revisit a theme I’ve written about many times in the past.

What do we deserve? The travel industry says we deserve a vacation. The cannabis industry says we deserve access to pot. If you spent a few hours watching TV, listening to podcasts, and scrolling through social media, you could construct a lengthy list of what you “deserve.” At a more philosophical level, do you deserve to be happy? And most importantly, do you deserve to go to heaven?

I fear that many people are easily satisfied with empty platitudes and never truly ponder life’s most important questions.

One person I admire for his lack of platitudes is Ben Sasse. Sasse, a former senator from Nebraska and former president of the University of Florida, is my age. In fact, I am just a couple of weeks older than he is. Last December he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Like me he’s been married more than 30 years and has three children, although his youngest is a few years younger than our youngest. Although he appears to have been quiet the last couple of weeks on social media, he had been doing quite a few interviews. Without a miracle, Ben Sasse will not survive and yet he is full of joy and hope. In one interview Sasse even says, “I feel better than I deserve.”

What do you think Ben Sasse thinks he deserves?

True followers of Christ know that they are sinners, that fellowship with a holy and perfect God is not possible. Deserving heaven isn’t even in the realm of possibility.

I love this paragraph from R.C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God:

Death often frightens us. When we see another person die, we are reminded that we are also mortal, that someday death will come to us. It is a thought we try to push from our minds. We are uncomfortable when another’s death rudely intrudes into our lives and reminds us of what we will face at some unknown future date. Death reminds us that we are creatures. Yet as fearsome as death is, it is nothing compared with meeting a holy God. When we encounter Him, the totality of our creatureliness breaks upon us and shatters the myth that we have believed about ourselves, the myth that we are demigods, junior-grade deities who will try to live forever.

I know I deserve hell. But in the paradox of faith, this knowledge is unbelievably freeing. I am not trying to earn anything. I could never. In fact, it always evidences a misunderstanding of who God is for someone to think they deserve to be in His presence for a millisecond, much less eternity. But I have assurance of eternity because my Savior — who is perfect — clothes me with His righteousness. I do not know what I would be like if I was facing a terminal diagnosis, but I hope and pray I would be like Ben Sasse.

Praying today for this godly man. I hope you’ll join me.

And I also hope that you know this simplest of truths: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)(NIV).

Blessings,

Kristie