No out-of-body experience. No angels incarnate. I didn’t even get a long tunnel going toward that mysterious bright light. Nothing. Suffering from a perforated colon after my kidney transplant had failed, I lingered at the line separating life from death, mortality from immortality. I fell into an induced coma lasting four months. A machine helped me breath for five. I had more than a dozen surgeries, countless procedures and lost more than eighty pounds and many of my body functions. I nearly died.

Today, I can walk again, see again, hear again and can tell you how important it is that we resist the trend to define any person as anything other than human. For a long time, I was a mess of tubes, bags, canisters, wires, gauze, and monitors, like some scientific experiment gone terribly wrong.

Some wondered if I had ceased to be a "viable" human being. Several of my nurses admitted later that a point came when they thought further care for me was useless. I am firmly convinced that if I had been in the Netherlands or Oregon, instead of Pennsylvania, my family would have been encouraged to euthanize me.

It wasn’t even suggested. But what would have happened if a budget-sensitive accountant in authority had gotten hold of my billing record? What if my minister had told my family that there was nothing left of what makes me, me? What if...?

God calls us in a different direction. He shows us the way and holds us in his hand. He encourages us, pointing to the glory we will receive which cannot be compared to the sufferings of this life. Praise him for his providence!

When you are asked to consider whether killing can be an act of Christian mercy and compassion for the sick, the old or the young, remember the humility which God calls us to practice. He is the Creator; we are the created. It is for us to submit and for him to decide. The Lord came to bring life and life abundant. How can we serve him if we are a party to snuffing it out?