In my nursing home ministry, I meet many people who are facing death. And like all of us, I also have to face such difficult inevitabilities with those whom I love. John Donne's English may be old, but his thoughts are eternal.
This is my play's last scene
by John Donne
This is my play's last scene; here heavens appoint
My pilgrimage's last mile; and my race,
Idly, yet quickly run, hath this last pace,
My span's last inch, my minute's latest point;
And gluttonous death will instantly unjoint
My body and my soul, and I shall sleep a space;
But my'ever-waking part shall see that face
Whose fear already shakes my every joint.
Then, as my soul to'heaven, her first seat, takes flight,
And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell,
So fall my sins, that all may have their right,
To where they'are bred, and would press me, to hell.
Impute me righteous, thus purg'd of evil,
For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.

I Corinthians 15:53 For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality.
54But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory.
55"O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY?
O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?"
Chatboard (66)