One recent Sunday afternoon, Evy and I took my mother to do some visiting in the Alzheimer’s-Dementia Unit at Brethren Village. As we walked down the hall and saw men and women whose minds were pretty much gone, I wondered where their life’s journeys had taken them. Had some been CEOs? Had missionary service taken some to other lands? Had some been professors or CPAs or attorneys? Had some been Sunday School teachers? Had some been blue-collar workers? Had some been mothers and homemakers? Had some been Wall Street financiers?
No matter now. Regardless of their position in life, no matter their rank or station, each was now in the same boat–in the Alzheimer’s-Dementia Unit. Some were wide-eyed and gaping. Some were babbling incoherently. Some were playing with dolls or teddy bears. Some were drooling. It occurred to me that an Alzheimer’s or Dementia Unit is a great equalizer, a place where rank and station are no longer material.
But beyond an Alzheimer’s or Dementia Unit, an even greater equalizer is that of death. The rich and the poor … the high and the lowly … the intellectual and the dullard … the entrepreneur and the day laborer … the wise and the foolish … the competent and the inept … the powerful and the weak … the healthy and the disabled … the focused and the rudderless … the godly and the wicked … all equalized by the experience of death. Job understood this concept well. He wrote: “One man dies in full vigor, completely secure and at ease, his body well nourished, his bones rich with marrow. Another man dies in bitterness of soul, never having enjoyed anything good. Side by side they lie in the dust, and worms cover them both” (Job 21:23-26/NIV).
Knowing that it is appointed to each of us once to die and after that the judgment, and knowing that death is a great equalizer, it should behoove us not to boast about all we’ve achieved … not to brag about all we’ve accumulated … not to crow about all the places we’ve been … or not to be puffed up about the size of our investment portfolio. After all, beyond the point of death, we all stand on an even plane at the foot of the cross!
November/December, 2001