L’Chaim! To Life - with a Purpose
By Theresa Newell, LCJE Coordinator for North America
The news through all of March 2005 in the United States was dominated by two women: Ashley Smith and Terri Schiavo. They have appeared on the covers of major magazines, in daily newspapers, and repeatedly on TV news broadcasts.
Ashley, a 26-year-old widowed single mom, spent seven hours in her apartment in an Atlanta suburb with a convicted rapist who had murdered four people that day. In the face of what had to be a harrowing experience, Ashley kept her cool. She ministered to Brian Nichols, the felon, shared about her life with him, read to him from THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN LIFE, a best-selling book (21 million sold) by a Southern Baptist pastor in California. She fed him pancakes with real butter. After those hours, he gave himself up peaceably to a SWAT team. "I didn’t want him to hurt anybody else. He didn’t want to hurt anybody else," Ashley said. This young woman who had given her life to the Lord not long before was able to speak a word of life to a man now charged with four murders. "You need to go to prison and share the word of God," Smith said she told him. God had a purpose even for his life, she said. "He thought I was an angel sent from God."
Terri Schindler-Schiavo has been disabled and unable to speak since 1990. Her husband and legal guardian wanted to allow Terri to die by removing her food and hydration tube. Her parents protested saying that they would provide all care for her if they were given guardianship. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. Thousands demonstrated in Pinellas Park, Florida, outside Terri’s hospice and in Washington, DC. In spite of legal appeals, on March 18 the tube was removed. The Schiavo case focused the nation on "a culture of life" vs. "a culture of death" in our society. National Public Radio interviewed a Catholic priest, an imam, a rabbi, and a Buddhist monk on the subject of death.
In both stories, religious faith played a dominate role: Ashley is a born-again Christian and Terri’s family are devout Roman Catholics. Both appealed on the basis that the Creator gave life: it is sacred and each life has a purpose.
The stories broke just as the Church prepared to celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. A columnist in a local paper wrote: "Last year at this time the nation was convulsed by ‘The Passion of the Christ.’ This year we are convulsed by the passion of Terri Schiavo."2 On Good Friday Christianity Today commented on its online magazine: "There's something awfully disconcerting about comparing the death of Terri Schiavo to the Passion of Jesus, but some connections are unavoidable. We're meditating on Christ's declaration 'I thirst' at the same time we're reading about her dehydration."3
Through these weeks, I thought of the over five million Jewish people in the United States. What were they thinking when they read about Ashley or Terri or heard reports in the media? Recently, I visited Naomi, a Jewish friend who soon after our visit died of cancer. "We are all dying, Naomi, you and me," I told her. "This is just boot camp. The real life with Jesus is ahead of us for all eternity if we receive Him into our lives." That day she asked me to pray with her that her heart would be open to Him.
I pray that we will respond with courage to have many conversations about L’Chaim with a purpose among the Jewish people here in the North America who do not know Him who is True Life.
Theresa Newell
lcjena@comcast.net
Notes
- Bill Hewitt, et al, "Seven Hours of Terror" People 28 March 2005: 54-59.
- Ruth Ann Dailey, "Justice Starved," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 28 March 2005, final ed.: A-9.
- ctweekly-html@lists.christianitytoday.com. 25 March 2005.