This was what I thought about years later as my cruiser nosed its way down Lincoln Avenue toward an address on the south side of town. Another police department had called that morning to inform us that a man, whose Mother lived in the city where I worked, had been found deceased, floating in a river. They requested that someone from my department drive over to her house and break the news in person.

My cruiser stopped in front of an unassuming two story, white with green trim and a screened in front porch. I reached up over the visor and retrieved the envelope containing a neatly folded piece of letter-head on which I had typed the name of the officer in charge of the investigation and his contact information. Then, donning my Stetson, I stepped from the cruiser and walked up onto the porch.

That is such a strange moment; it’s like the calm before a storm that you’re in charge of unleashing. It’s miserable. I did a gut check and knocked on the door. There were some words that needed to be spoken and, once uttered, I would be free to drive away from this woman’s nightmare. I heard feet shuffling down the hall, and I steeled myself for what had to be done. The door opened to reveal an older woman, with thin graying hair. One hand held the door open, the other a cigarette. She looked at me puzzled.

I said what needed to be said in the kindest words I could muster. I asked her if I could call someone to come be with her. Strangely, even harder than breaking the news of her son’s death was making my exit. Eventually she gave me my out by thanking me for coming and showing me the door.

“I’m truly sorry for your loss, Ma’am.”

Those words rang so hollow.

As time passes, my memories from my brief tenure as a police officer have grown dim and kind of fuzzy around the edges. Names and streets elude me now. Unfortunately, however, some memories remain horribly vivid.

Isn’t death a horrible thing? I can remember feeling a sort of tingly, light-headed sensation each time as I walked into the presence of a deceased human being.

I want to be macho and say they didn’t bother me, but that’s not true. They did. They still do. Worse than the actual dead, however, were the walking dead- men and women who were trapped hopelessly in their self-destructive lifestyles. The walking dead haunt me. They were slaves of compulsion, caught up and born along in a current of misshapen longings and disordered cravings which would lead inexorably to their own destruction unless, somehow, they could be saved. Every time I interacted with them I would come away with just one question- How’s it going to end? I wondered if they saw the trajectory of their lives as I did.

I’m wasn’t sure I could help them, but I wanted to try. I knew Christ was the only answer to their problems.

Fellow Christian, isn’t it a joyous thing that the Gospel does not task us with giving death announcements to the living but rather life announcements to the dying. How sad it is to tell the living that someone they loved has died, but how joyous a thing it is to tell the dying that they can live eternally.

Here’s a life announcement from Ephesians 2:1-6:

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,”

I hope you can join us this Sunday as we continue our study through the great conversion stories of the book of Acts. This week we’ll be studying an account found in Acts 13 about a time when Paul was called upon to give a life announcement to a dead man named Sergius Paulus. It’s a fascinating story and I’m excited to explore all that God wants to say to us through it.