Death after long illness

The meditation text is the words of Jesus found in the Gospel of John: "Let not your hearts be troubled."

If you are at all like me you probably like things to start and stop quickly, and on command. If the engine of the car begins to diesel after we've turned off the ignition, we know something is wrong. If we turn off the radio, but can still hear music, we know something is very strange. Yet, if we tell our child to "stop crying," we don't expect instant silence. When an airplane comes in for a landing, we know that it has to roll for a long way before it stops. When the great jet engines are turned off, we can hear them wind down, like a quarter spinning on the kitchen counter.As we've watched ___________ "wind down" rather quickly during the past month, our own …