Messages that offer hope for the future are too good to save until the end of life

PEOPLE’S dying words have interested and intrigued people for centuries. I find the idea that Oscar Wilde saying on his deathbed, “Either that wallpaper goes or I do” a bit fanciful. It sounds like the kind of thing Wilde would have liked people to think he had said. In the same way the reported derogatory final words of King George V about Bognor probably owes more to invention than reality.

Some last words are easier to verify. Spike Milligan’s gravestone in

Winchelsea really does contain the words (in Gaelic), “I told you I was ill”. Less humorously Sir Winston Churchill died saying, “I am bored with it all”.

The gospel writers spend more time writing about the final week of Jesus’ life than anything else. It is not surprising then that his final words are recorded in detail. Those words include a prayer of forgiveness for those who brought him to this place of execution the promise of eternal hope to a dying thief. He shows concern for the future welfare of his mother and we also hear him utter words that heighten the tragic position he finds himself in as he says, “I am thirsty”.

Finally, we are told that with his last breath he says, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”. So, Jesus died, as he had lived, with an understanding that fulness of life lies in surrendering our plans, ambitions, hopes and dreams into the hands of the God who made us and loves us.

Thinking about this recently it seemed that these words were too good to save until the end of life.

They feel like words that would make a good start to each day. What would life be like if each morning we took time to stop and recognise that we do not have to journey through life alone? If I believe, as the apostle Paul did, that God is able to do in and through us “far more than we can ask or imagine” perhaps our daily prayer should be “Lord, we are yours and my life is in your hands”.