When the historian H. G. Wells died in 1946, many of the newspapers reporting the event quoted the last words he ever spoke. Friends and nurses were fluttering about his bedside trying to be helpful, adjusting pillows, pulling up the covers, administering sedatives, and so on.

Wells turned to them and said, "Don't bother me. Can't you see I'm busy dying."

It was the last flicker of humor from a gallant spirit.

I've been thinking about that lately...about the way people die. It says a lot about how they have lived -- in fact it says almost everything about how they lived. And I keep asking myself the question, "Am I living in such a way that I could share at least a little bit of humor on my deathbed?"

Tony Campolo, that remarkable Christian communicator, who shared with us so effective…