There is room
Comfort for anyone afraid of dying, in the words Jesus left His friends, guided by John 14-17
On the night before He died Jesus told frightened friends He was going first and there would be room. Fourteen short chapters on John 14-17 for anyone afraid of dying, or sitting beside someone who is. It never calls the fear wrong and never says more than He said.
177 pages14 chaptersEnglish
About this book
Nobody around you will say the word dying out loud. You lie awake with it anyway.
On the night before He died, Jesus was shaken Himself and said so. Then He spent the evening telling frightened friends what He could tell them. He never described heaven. He said He was going first and there would be room. This book stays inside that one evening, John 14 to 17, and refuses to say more than He said. It does not call your fear a lack of faith, and it does not promise your circumstances will change.
Inside:
- A house with room in it, and a person given in place of directions
- Peace handed over by a man already on His way to what He feared
- One job you can do lying down: stay joined
- The hardest things told ahead of time, so you remember He said them
- A wait with no date, and a person on the other side of it
- A prayer for the one you are leaving behind and cannot answer for
- The locked door He came back through
For anyone who has heard a diagnosis, or is sitting beside someone who has. Some nights you are the one going, some nights the friend being left; each chapter says which chair you are in. Give it to a parent, a spouse, a friend in hospice, or keep it on your own nightstand. Short chapters, plain words, one verse to keep.
When you close it, you will be able to sit in that room and say out loud the few things Jesus said that night, and not one thing more.
What is inside
- The chair you are sitting in
- Is there anywhere for me to go
- Just show me, then I'll stop shaking
- Everyone leaves the room in the end
- Give me something to hold tonight
- I can't do anything from this bed
- Who do I tell, and what
- Tell me the worst before it comes
- What if what waits is a verdict
- How long is a little while
- They said my fear means I don't believe
- I can't find the words to pray
- What about the one I'm leaving behind
- What you carry out
A look inside
The chair you are sitting in
The man who said do not let your heart be troubled had been troubled himself an hour before, and said so at the same table, which is where this book begins.
You sit in the parking lot with the engine off. The appointment took twenty minutes. The word the doctor used is still in the car with you, and you cannot drive it home yet, so you sit. The radio is on and you do not hear it.
Or you are in the other chair, the plastic one beside the bed. You have learned where the good coffee is and which nurse tells you the truth. Everyone on the ward is kind and busy, and nobody has said the word dying out loud. The person in the bed knows. You know. You talk about the parking.
Or the chair has been taken away. Eleven months since the funeral, and the house is loud with quiet. People stopped ringing in the third month. You still wake at three with the question you never asked while there was time: where did they go. There is a third chair, and it is the one you are in.
Or you are well. Nobody has used any word about you. You picked this up because someone you love is in one of those chairs, or because you lay awake once and the thought arrived uninvited: one day it will be me. You are allowed in. The friends at the table that night were all well.
Here is the first honest thing. This book cannot promise you will not die. It will not try, and it will not hope you fail to notice. Nor will it tell you, in a gentle voice, that your fear is a lack of faith. The ward and the church both sometimes want you calmer than you are. This book does not.
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