Dec 28, 2015

A New Perspective

Pastor Scott Hausrath

SDB Church, North Loup, NE

One of the most significant blessings I’ve received recently is a new perspective. It’s a new perspective about life in this world. It’s the perspective that life in this world is temporary.

I know what you’re thinking: “Pastor Scott, this isn’t a new perspective.” You’re right. I should have learned a long time ago that life in this world is temporary. I mean, it’s blatantly obvious, isn’t it? Just look around. People die. They disappear. They are no more.

For me, the blessing is that what had been only head knowledge for so many years is now finally starting to also become heart knowledge.

I was 50 years old when I lost my father. Before that, I had not experienced the death of any close family member. For the last four years, I’ve been pastoring in North Loup, Nebraska. We’re an older congregation, so I’ve been performing many more funerals than when I was pastoring in Southern California. This Friday we’ll have the funeral for one of our members who passed away today. On top of this, for the last two years I’ve been serving as a chaplain in our local hospice. The hospice patient I saw today will probably not be here tomorrow.

Seeing reports of death on TV, on a computer screen, or in a newspaper reinforces our head knowledge that death happens. However, seeing the deaths of my friends, my neighbors, my brothers and sisters in Jesus, has given me this newfound heart knowledge. It’s this new perspective that has become a significant blessing to me.

But why? Why has my experience of losing precious people become such a blessing to me? I can’t find any better words to explain it to you than those of Natalie Faust. Natalie was a Number Six copy, a Cylon who led a rebel faction in the Cylon civil war. During the war, their local resurrection ship was destroyed, so they could no longer have their souls placed into a fresh body upon their death. In this sense, the Cylons

became just like us humans: they became mortal. Natalie described it this way: “In our civil war, we’ve seen death. We watched our people die. Gone forever. As terrible as it was, beyond the reach of the resurrection ships, something began to change. We could feel a sense of time. As if each moment held its own significance.” *

This is what my new perspective has taught me. Because those we love will not be with us forever (in this world), each interaction we have with them is significant. I’m trying to start viewing each encounter with people as a unique, non-repeatable event. This new perspective is helping me to place a higher value on my time with people. It’s helping me to acknowledge and experience an amazing treasure I always had, but never appreciated: the richness of connecting with those people whom God brings into my life every day.

Thank you, Lord, for this very significant blessing.

* Battlestar Galactica, season 4, episode 7,

“Guess What’s Coming to Dinner?”

Scott Hausrath was born and raised in California and has also lived in the Seattle area. He currently has the privilege of pastoring the Seventh Day Baptist congregation in North Loup, Nebraska.