The Last Thing Zack Ever Taught Me 2011

I have felt so raw and undone before God this week. A synonym for raw is unrefined, but this
week’s case of vulnerability has been truly refining. Sanctifying before the Master Artist of my life. But
the pain and weakness has not gone without purpose, for the truth still stands that God does not waste
pain. More thoughts than what can be sorted out have circled through my mind this week but the
resounding truth still remains as the foundation. All of life, and death, is for the glory of God.

While I was driving back from the funeral on Monday night, I began to see pieces of the greater
masterpiece. Zack died in the rich context of the hope of gospel of Jesus Christ. What keeps his family’s
grief from being utterly debilitating is the hope of that greater masterpiece. God, who is rich in mercy,
knew that the pain of our sin and that the destruction that results from our choices would lead to
terrible pain. But even before man broke the perfect fellowship with God in the garden, where there
was no pain, tears, death, or disease, God had a plan of restoration. His desire was and is to bring man
back to that perfect fellowship with Himself, to a place of perfect peace. He accomplished that plan by
giving Himself, through the death of Jesus. But not only through his death, but namely, through his
resurrection! Believing in and living according to the truth of Jesus’ resurrection gives us new life in
Christ while we are here on earth. But this new life is still only a shadow of what is still coming. God has
given the Holy Spirit as a guarantee to those who believe in the name of Jesus alone, kind of like a down
payment of the greatest gift He could give to the most undeserving.

And what’s to come? Life… eternal life. Secure. Peaceful. Complete. Abundant. Life free from the
pangs of death. No sorrow. No pain. No evil, violence, or selfish pride. Sin brings all those things. There
will be no more sin. For Christ conquered sin and death! And in the end, those who believe will rest in
the security of a New City, one whose walls are miles high, but whose gates always stand wide open
because there are no more enemies to be defeated. Christ is victorious and all the believers will live
together in new, complete, and strong bodies to worship for all eternity.

I do not know what exactly happens between the time when a believer dies and when Jesus
returns to come get His people. But I cling to the promise that to be absent from the body is to be
present with the Lord. Zack IS with the Lord, now.

But here’s the great awareness that resulted from this week. What if Monday night I had been
driving home from a funeral of a dear friend who did not believe solely in the name of Jesus, but who
lived life to the fullest and to the best of his own ability but without Christ. How differently I would feel
then! How differently the family’s grief would have been in that situation! The urgency to share the
truth of the gospel became entirely different in me!

I thought of my dear friends who have not accepted God’s gift of forgiveness and freedom
through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus! I thought of the hopelessness of their lives. I thought
the young girl I ran into in the grocery store on Friday night just hours after hearing of Zack’s death. I
knew this girl from my childhood, but had not seen her since.

Friday morning in class we studied Ephesians 2:4-5 that says, “But God, being rich in mercy,
because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our sins, made us alive
together with Christ by grace you have been saved.” I began to realize, even before I heard about Zack’s
 The Last Thing Zack Ever Taught Me 2011

death, that I have a very watered down picture of death. We see it on TV and we hear about it from
distant people, usually of older people but we do not know that death means useless, purposeless,
lifelessness, hopeless, worthless, of no effect. Most of us do not know the deep pain of death. Most do
not know what the sight of life leaving someone’s body really is like. But I know that when I looked at
this young girl, not just the physical characteristics of her lifestyle but the hopelessness in her eyes, I saw
what death really is. In that moment, just eight hours or so after hearing the news, God began to piece
together what He would most strongly teach me through the weekend of grieving Zack’s death. Death as
Zack knew it is not the death into hopelessness. Zack had been bought out of that death through death
of Jesus. Zack’s death was one that was coated in the fullness of life. He moved from walking in newness
of life with Christ to walking in fullness of Christ for eternity. But the death which I saw in the eyes of the
one Friday night is far from hope. A hopeless life that leads to death. Even the pains and despairs of this
life will be bright compared to the eternity separated from the God that loves and gives peace.

So as I drove back Monday night and the urgency weighed so heavy on my heart, along with the
fear of the reality of death, not knowing which young loved-one I might lose next, I realized that I had to
immediately call several loved ones who I know do not love Jesus and cry out to them with urgency the
truth I had realized through Zack’s death. The shortness of life. Not just the short 22 years of Zack’s life,
but the vapor that all life is in comparison to eternity. I shared with them the only source of hope is
Jesus. I shared God’s perfect plan in creating us for Himself, but how we screwed up that plan by
choosing to disobey for the sake of our selfish pride. I had to tell them that God had a plan anyway to
buy back what belonged to him to begin with. I told them of the urgency. I told them the truth. I told
them that I realized that if I loved them, I would call them and tell them immediately because who
knows what tomorrow holds!

In 2 ½ years, I will leave for another country for two years to continue telling the news. But in
order to continue to do that, I have to do be sharing this truth urgently right now. Nearly 2 billion people
do not believe in Jesus. Over 100 people die every minute. But what kind of death is it? Physical death
that is blanketed in God’s hope and promise of eternal life, like Zack? Or is it the physical death of the
spiritually dead, a death which has no hope?

I’ve always known what Christians are supposed to say about death and about suffering hard
times, but this weekend I realized that I never knew. What about hope? We cannot know when we will
die, but the real question is are you dead already…have you ever even lived?

Katie Kasey

Written March 9, 2011