It was in a small town hospital with a nighttime staff of three. He was the crotchety ol' husband of a dear, sweet faithful member of my church. The hospital called because they did not expect him to live through the night. When I arrived, his wife begged me to pray that God would not let her husband die. She knew he wasn't ready. It wasn't as if she was desperate to hang on to him. It's that she wanted him to have just one more chance to accept the gift of eternal life that Christ freely extended—even to the likes of him. Even if he refused, she was thankful she wouldn't have to go on living with the haunting lie that every moment he would be tortured in some underworld inferno. Her prayer for him was motivated out of compassion and love rather than fear.

He was afraid—but barely alive enough to know it. Somehow we had connected on my first visit to their home—only enough so that he didn't throw me out. He later told me, with obvious delight, how many pastors he had chased off his property. Now he was dying and afraid—not believing what his wife knew to be true.

The room was silent except for the beep of the monitor recording his vital signs. Several times it stopped, only to resurrect again. He was hanging on for dear life.

Sometime in the middle of the night, he became lucid enough to know we were there.

"Do you want me to pray for you?" I asked. He nodded. I held his hand. "I know you are afraid, but you don't have to be," I assured him.

In the moments that followed he found forgiveness and drifted back to sleep.

As the light of dawn spilled into his room, he awakened to realize he was alive. At the prompting of his wife, he asked to be anointed. Three days later he went home to live a very different life. He was learning to be kinder and less critical of others. The little town where he lived noticed the change.

Several years later, he fell asleep in Jesus whom he had come to tolerate even more than he tolerated me. He wasn't a model member, but he wasn't afraid. He was a saint.

His death was still a loss to his dear wife who now faced life as a widow. But the pain and the sting of death were gone. She wasn't desperate for me to pray for another "resurrection." The loneliness was dreadful, but her antidote was hope, knowing that his Savior promised to be her constant companion.

She took comfort in what she had been able to teach him—that when he died, he would be at peace and rest. He would, as Jesus said, "sleep" until the morning when his Savior would call them both home.

Since that day under the tree in the garden, death has been with us. It is painful. It is sad. But we do not grieve as those who have no hope. It's just a sleep until the dawn.

Gary Burns is the communication director for the Lake Union Conference.