Maybe we shouldn’t be hating death as much as we used to.

Ever since our Lord Jesus went to the cross and pulled its fangs, descended into grave and recovered the keys, then rose from the tomb as the first fruits of eternal life, the poor ogre has lost his threat.

He still growls but all his rantings are just so much bumping his gums.

Maybe we ought to pity death.

Like a honeybee that has lost its stinger but is still flying around scaring people, death can no longer do any kind of significant damage to all who are in Jesus Christ.

No more fear, Christian. It’s all gone.

“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (I Cor. 15:55)

Hebrews 2:14 puts this in an unforgettable way: “He Himself partook of (flesh and blood) that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to bondage all their lives.”

Defeat the devil, deliver the hostages.

Big task. Great victory. Huge celebration–one that’s still going on.

Thank you, Lord, for that incredible weekend, one that changed life forever on this third rock from the sun.

A few years back, Franklin Graham was speaking to the Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis about his wonderful parents. His father, Billy Graham, at home recovering from a couple of major surgeries, was experiencing constant pain. His mother, Ruth Bell Graham, no longer able to walk, was living in a wheelchair. (She has since gone to be with the Lord.)

Franklin said, “The other day, Daddy hobbled into Mother’s bedroom and said, ‘I feel so bad. I feel like the Lord is ready to take me home.’ Mother said, ‘That must feel wonderful.'”

As we laughed, Franklin said, “He won’t get any sympathy from Mother!”

I feel bad enough to die. That’s awful.

When I die, I’m going to Heaven. That’s wonderful.

That’s how it is with believers in this age: “caught betwixt the two,” as Paul expressed it in Philippians 1:23.

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Today, Sunday, was a day of funerals.

Our family gathered at the family church near Nauvoo, Alabama, and laid to rest my 41-year-old nephew, Russell McKeever, who died last Thursday of pneumonia and heart failure.

Two hours later, the convention center in Beckley, West Virginia, was packed as families and friends of the 29 miners killed in Coalmont, WV three weeks ago gathered for a memorial service. President Obama and Vice-President Biden spoke and did well. The most touching part of the service may have been the president simply reading the names of all 29. Then family members walked by the 29 miners helmets and turned on each of the lamps.

I sat there taking it in, feeling as though I had an apple stuck in my throat.

When a man sang “Go Up High Upon the Mountain,” that did it for me. In 2006, that Vince Gill song played a prominent role at the funeral of my youngest brother, Charlie, the father of Russell. Charlie had for a time been a coal miner, too. When he left the mines, it was to drive trucks on the open highway, an equally hazardous career.

Raleigh County, West Virginia, is where we lived when my dad and all his brothers worked in the mines just a few miles from Coalmont. Dad’s father, George McKeever, and all his brothers were miners too. George died of a heart attack in his mid-40s. All his brothers died too young, including one named Joe McKeever, who barely made it out of his 40s.

Furthermore, all my dad’s brothers with the possible exception of the youngest battled emphysema–black lung–the rest of their days.

When we no longer had a family member inside the mines no one shed a tear. It’s a cruel, scary life. Many a night as a child I lay awake, praying for God to keep my dad safe down inside that mountain.

After working inside the mines for 35 years, Dad took disability when he was 49, then lived into his 96th year. I’ll never quit thanking the Lord for that.

The Coalmont miners ranged in age from young adults to nearing retirement.

Russell hardly made it out of his 30s.

“Life really is fair,” someone said after the unexpected death of his wife. “Sooner or later it breaks the heart of every person.”

Recently, while reading “Appetite for America,” the story of Fred Harvey’s restaurant empire across the southwest in the late 1800s and the first half of the 20th century, I was struck by how young these people were when they died.

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In looking over the ten items-in-our-bucket so far, it occurs to me that I may be stepping into a little trap here: listing only what I’ve already done. I’ve been to the Holy Land, memorized chapters, that sort of thing. How convenient for me this would be, and how pointless.

So, I promise to try to keep it honest here and speak to myself as well as to the rest of us.

40. Pay off everything and get out of debt.

Is this a “Christian” goal? Or just something that would be good for everyone to do? In Scripture, one reason for believers having money in the first place is so that we may be generous. One of the great hindrances to our generosity is the heavy debt load we stagger under. We’d like to give to help those poor people or to support the missionary, but we don’t have it to give.

If we paid off our debts and did not incur additional financial burdens, think how liberating that would be.

The question is how.

Answer: live simply, get everyone in the household behind this goal, say no to expensive choices such as eating out or purchasing entertainment centers or new cars, and double up on the existing payments. If you have too many credit cards, cut all but one or two up and close the accounts. The way I understand Galatians 5:22-23, discipline or self-control is a part of the fruit of the Spirit. You’ll be needing it to get control of your finances, so it’s good to know the Lord wants to produce it in us.

39. Find your spiritual gift and put it to use.

According to the Bible (Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12), every believer is gifted by the Holy Spirit with a spiritual capability. We can only dream of how effective the Christian community would be if we all claimed our gift and put it to use for the Lord. My hunch is less than one-third of the members of a typical church even make an effort toward this.

Rather than take some kind of printed inventory that purports to tell you what your spiritual gift is, my suggestion is rather that you try a lot of things. To find out if your spiritual gift is teaching, sit in on Bible study classes, then volunteer either to substitute for the teacher or to assist him/her. To find out if your gift is in “helps,” volunteer to assist in some kind of project–a church banquet, a Vacation Bible school, a youth camp–and try your hand at it.

The best way to recruit people to the place where the Lord has prepared them is simply to expose them to various kinds of ministries. Their spirit will respond to the right one.

38. Develop some latent talent such as for music or art.

Often when I’m sketching people, someone will say, “I used to enjoy art. I just got away from it.” I suggest that they get back to it.

When churches began having orchestras in worship services, members remembered their old high school saxophones or clarinets gathering dust in closets. They cleaned them up, began practicing, and now they play in church every Sunday. For some, this has opened up a new world.

I’ve known retirees who began taking piano lessons for the first time. “I’ve always wanted to play,” they would say. They’ll not turn into concert pianists, and that’s not their goal. It’s something for their own growth and fulfillment.

Take a cooking class. Find out when your local plant nursery is having classes on growing roses and sign up. The local art store has postings for new classes all over town, from beginners to intermediate to accomplished. Ask the Red Cross about classes for CPR and lifesaving training.

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This has become a popular parlor game and a best-selling theme for all kinds of books–places to go, things to do, foods to eat, scenes to see, before you leave this world, or “kick the bucket.” That’s what gave it the name “bucket list.” Hollywood made a movie about this a few years ago.

Today was evidently a morning of slow news because one of the television shows ran a feature on beer, “50 brews on our bucket list.” “Oh great,” I thought. “Just what some beer-guzzling couch-potato needs, an excuse to indulge himself even more.”

So, let’s try to do the right thing here and come up with some positive, non-alcoholic deeds which every disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ should do before departing this earthly sod.

Everyone will have his/her own list. This is mine, with a little help from some Facebook friends whom I’ve asked for contributions. Since we’re going for 50 things to do, we’ll break this article down into several manageable segments.

Putting them in any kind of order would be impossible since I don’t know what we’ll end up with. So, just because one item is low on the list and another is high says nothing about their relative importance.

You’re invited to click on “comments” at the end and give us items on your bucket list…places to go, experiences to have, things to see or taste or hear, before the Lord sends His angels for you.

50. Visit the Holy Land.

Margaret and I went to Israel once, over 20 years ago, and found it life-changing as well as ministry-altering. Honestly, I probably would not have gone then had it not been a 10th anniversary gift from the First Baptist Church of Columbus, Mississippi. For months after returning, I ran a low-grade fever just thinking of where we had been and the sights we had seen. I’d turn a page and there would be a photo of Jerusalem or the Sea of Galille and my eyes would tear up. It had that kind of effect on me.

So, go. Traveling to the Middle East is as safe right now as it has ever been, and you’re not getting any younger. I’m thrilled to see the occasional seminary program that allows young preachers and missionaries to visit Israel as a part of their education. Wish I’d gone when I was 25. But on the other hand, I got far more out of it by going when I was 44. Best solution: go twice.

Oh, and send your preacher. Even if he’s reluctant to go.

49. Win someone to Jesus.

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Recently, as my son Neil and I were returning to New Orleans from visiting my mom in north Alabama, I said, “Let’s try to make church at Eutaw. That’s where Grandpa Henderson grew up.”

We called ahead and found out that their Sunday morning service began at 11 a.m., ideal for us. We walked in at a quarter till, and took our seats.

We had a drive of some 7 hours that day, but I had told Neil, “If anyone other than the pastor invites us to lunch, we’ll say ‘no.’ But if he does, I’d like to do it.”

Anyone who knows me knows my love for pastors. I’m always glad to meet a brother laboring in the Lord’s work.

Not that we knew anyone at that church. But I figured that my son had distant relatives in the congregation, for one thing, and for the other, I know small-town Southern hospitality.

We ate with the pastor that day. Rick Williams assured us his wife had made a great lasagna and salad, and that she and her mother and their adult daughter would not be there, that they were attending some function at a nearby town immediately after church. She had even suggested that he invite us to lunch.

Hospitality. It’s a great concept, particularly if you are away from home and on the road.

In the old days, hospitality was an essential of life. In a time when and in countries where few hotels and restaurants existed, you depended on the kindness of strangers.

Pastor Adrian Rogers was speaking for a week of services in a church I pastored. At one point, he said, “Joe, do you ever get up to Memphis?” I said, “Once in a while.” He said, “Well, my friend, when you come to Memphis, don’t ever worry about a place to stay or a place to eat.”

Long pause.

“We have some of the finest restaurants and hotels you’ve ever seen.”

Great line. Not what I was expecting.

He was just making a funny, but the joke makes a good point: with the hospitality industry (that’s what it’s actually called) occupying such a prominent position in the economic life of this country, we’re no longer dependent on people opening their homes to strangers as in the old days.

That’s good. And yet we’ve lost something.

God said to Israel, “An alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34).

In the New Testament, the word translated “hospitality” is “philoxenia,” literally “love of strangers.”

Our English word “hospitality” is uncomfortably close to “hospital” for good reason: they go back to the same parent, the Latin “hospitalis,” originally a place of rest and entertainment. Other offspring of this parent are “host,” the one extending this welcome treatment, and “hostage,” which formerly meant entertainment. “Hospice” and “hostels” retain some of the original meaning of the Latin word.

Missionaries tell us the concept of hospitality is alive and well in many countries of the world, and constitutes a vital element in their ministry.

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Have you ever learned a lesson early in life, promptly proceeded to forget it, and then had it driven home to you years later?

Here’s what happened this weekend….

I was preaching at the Delacroix-Hope Baptist Church downriver from New Orleans in the community known as St. Bernard in the parish of the same name. Before Katrina, nearly 5 years ago, this church was actually located on Delacroix Island, a fishing village. The hurricane ruined the community and the church building disappeared. So, when the people regathered, they started meeting in a little Presbyterian church that was eventually donated to them. Their pastor for the past ten years or so, James “Boogie” Melerine, a native of the island community, has just retired and they’ve asked me to preach last Sunday and next.

There might have been sixty people in attendance. When the children left for their own service just prior to the sermon–I always hate that; they’re my favorite group!–I was left with 35 or 40 adults. The song service was fine, but nothing indicated this was going to be an unusual hour for all of us.

Then we came to the time of the public invitation.

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They came to Jesus with two things on their minds. They sincerely wanted to know how He would answer their question; if in the process they could trip Him up, so much the better.

“Lord, which is the Greatest Commandment?”

Jesus replied, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength.” He was quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5, a verse known, loved, and memorized by every faithful Jew.

“Good answer,” the questioner said, and began walking away.

“And the second one is a lot like it,” Jesus called after him.

Second one? Did anyone hear us asking the Lord what was the second greatest commandment? I didn’t, did you?

What’s going on here?

As the man turned back to the Lord, Jesus said, “The second commandment is: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” A far less familiar verse taken from Leviticus 19:18.

With this word, the Lord Jesus sent a message down through the centuries to His people of every generation: God will not allow us to turn the Christian faith into a vertical, me-and-Jesus-only kind of thing.

My relationship with Jesus Christ provides salvation. My relationship with other people proves my salvation.

Vertical, horizontal. The sign of the cross, the perfect symbol of the Christian faith.

The dual relationship which Jesus commands is taught all through Scripture.

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