Pastor Thomas Long tells about the time he was a guest preacher at a church where years before he served as a student pastor:

After the service, I struck up a conversation with a woman whom I had not seen in many years. "How is your dad?" I asked her. "I remember him as one of my favorite people."

"I lost my dad last summer," she said sadly. "Cancer. But he lived a long and good life," she added, "and in many ways he died a peaceful death. The last few moments of his life were amazing.

"My sister, my brother and I were with him when he died. He had a stroke a few days before and lost his speech. You can imagine how hard that was on my father."

"Yes," I nodded. "Your father loved to talk, loved to tell a good story."

"About an hour before he died, he began a hard struggle. He was using this last bit of energy to try to speak. He seemed to have something he really wanted to communicate. It was terribly frustrating for him and painful to watch. Finally he pointed at my brother and motioned toward the sink in his room.

My sister said, 'He wants some water, and my brother went to the sink and poured a glass. He brought it over to my father, but Dad refused it and made a gesture toward my brother as if to say, 'No, you drink it. My brother hesitated for a moment and then took a sip from the glass. My father then motioned with his hand, as if to say, 'Pass it to your sister. My brother handed me the glass, and my father repeated the gesture.

"It was then that it dawned on my sister. 'He's serving communion, she said quietly."

Through these gestures, her father communicated that this was no ordinary hospital room, but a chapel, no ordinary dying, but a sacred and faithful death.