Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The View from a Hearse
    The View from a Hearse
    The View from a Hearse
    Ebook100 pages1 hour

    The View from a Hearse

    By Joseph Bayly and R. C. Sproul Jr.

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Three of Joseph Bayly's seven children died at young ages. He was intimately acquainted with the pain of death and was all too familiar with what he once called this enemy's "grim violence." But he was even more intimately acquainted with the One who conquered that enemy forever.

    The View from a Hearse is

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWarhorn Media
    Release dateOct 5, 2014
    ISBN9781940017051
    The View from a Hearse
    Author

    Joseph Bayly

    Joseph Bayly and his wife Heidi have five children. After planting Clearnote Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, Joseph and Heidi moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where they are working to plant Christ Church. Joseph has his BA from Vanderbilt University and his BDiv from Clearnote Pastors College.

    Read more from Joseph Bayly

    Related to The View from a Hearse

    Related ebooks

    Christianity For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Where is God IN THE CHAOS?

      Mar 18, 2022

      We live in extremely challenging times. Our unemployment rate is among the highest in the world. Our economy is tanking. Skilled people are emigrating. Crime, poverty, corruption, and violence are endemic in our society. Chaos seems to be overtaking

      3 min read

    • Article

      Irresistible Grace

      Feb 10, 2023

      In his book Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis describes an insight about divine mercy that particularly resonates with my own experience. I suspect it may also resonate with yours. Stories of how people come to Christ are as unique as the individuals that

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Pastor’s Wife

      May 28, 2021

      The Pastor’s Wife
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Lost Language of Lament

      Jul 30, 2021

      The Lost Language of Lament
      3 min read

    • Article

      Sunday, March 27

      Feb 16, 2022

      AT THE AGE OF FIFTY-FIVE, I thought I was over feeling left out, but an old wound recently resurfaced that made we wonder if I really was. A group of women I knew in college scheduled a conference call, and it reminded me of a painful experience from

      1 min read

    • Article

      My Friend, Tim Keller

      May 21, 2023

      My Friend, Tim Keller
      8 min read

    • Article

      Should the Internet Forget Italy's Most Viral Sex Tape?

      May 16, 2018

      Two years after her daughter’s suicide, a mother is still fighting to limit how far a meme can go.

      10 min read

    • Article

      The Secret Life of Grief

      Dec 3, 2013

      The Secret Life of Grief
      12 min read

    • Article

      Like Hell

      Jan 20, 2021

      Like Hell
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Monstrous Silence

      Dec 15, 2021

      BETH GILSTRAP is the author of Deadheading & Other Stories (2021), winner of the Red Hen Press Women’s Prose Prize. She is also the author of I Am Barbarella (Twelve Winters Press, 2015) and No Man’s Wild Laura (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2016). Born and r

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Business of Grief

      Apr 21, 2022

      In 2012, Creative Nonfiction’s book imprint, In Fact Books, published a collection of essays about end-of-life care. It was an incredibly meaningful experience for everyone who worked on the book, which paints, as Francine Prose wrote in her introduc

      20 min read

    • Article

      I Watched My Sister DISAPPEAR

      May 2, 2023

      Back in February, the news that Bruce Willis had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) hit me hard. Not because I’m a huge Die Hard fan, but because I know far too much about FTD, and my heart breaks for the 68-year-old Hollywood actor an

      4 min read

    • Article

      Where The Wild Things Are.

      Sep 3, 2020

      Where The Wild Things Are.
      12 min read

    • Article

      Being A Prisoner Is Like Being A Ghost

      Oct 25, 2019

      I still remember that moment six years ago when I became a ward of the state—a federal inmate. Shackled hand and foot, I arrived by bus at the penitentiary and was ordered to send my clothing and other personal effects home in a cardboard box. I had

      4 min read

    • Article

      I Was a Prison Hospice Aide. Then Came Coronavirus.

      Apr 10, 2020

      “I know firsthand how the looming threat of COVID-19 is being absorbed by all of us behind the walls.”

      4 min read

    • Article

      GOING TO THE edge

      Sep 3, 2020

      GOING TO THE edge
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Debut Novelist Imagines Life After Her Own Death

      Aug 4, 2022

      I was 17 years old when I died. The post A Debut Novelist Imagines Life After Her Own Death appeared first on The Millions.

      9 min read

    • Article

      Fragile Evidence

      Nov 1, 2021

      In 2008, just after college, I spent the summer traveling across Texas in a midnight-blue Corolla with a crooked “Yes We Can!” Obama bumper sticker. I’d been hired by a new organization called the Texas After Violence Project, founded by Walter Long,

      11 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The View from a Hearse

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The View from a Hearse - Joseph Bayly

      view-cover.jpgView_title-page_epub.jpg

      To the memory

      of three sons

      DANNY, JOHN, and JOE

      who introduced us

      to death

      —its tragedy, its glory

      Contents

      Foreword, by R. C. Sproul Jr.

      Editor’s Preface

      The View from a Hearse

      Prologue

      1. Death’s True Colors

      2. To Face Death

      3. Styles of Dying Change

      4. What Is Dying Like?

      5. People Used to Die at Home

      6. Understanding and Responding to the Dying Person

      7. The Management of Grief

      8. How Do You Comfort?

      9. Explaining Death to a Child

      10. When a Child Dies

      11. Suicide

      12. Prayer and Terminal Illness

      13. Our Death Celebrations

      14. Why Would a Kind God . . . ?

      15. Two Kinds of Death

      16. Beyond the Tunnel

      Epilogue

      Afterword, by C. Everett Koop

      Copyright Info

      Foreword

      Sometimes ghosts are silent, preferring to hide themselves . Sometimes, however, specters delight to announce their presence, to rattle chains, blow whispering winds, drop a book off a shelf. We should have known that our home was haunted. But we were young. And life was strong among us.

      We had been married just five years and God had just blessed us with our fourth child. The first two were bright, lively, delightful. The fourth was scrubbed, shiny, and new. The third, however, for all her joy, was failing to thrive. She was not gaining weight. Tiny tremors often shook her limbs.

      My wife and I loaded up children three and four, the youngest just two months old, and drove across the state to the Kluge Children’s Hospital for tests. In two days we were back home with a diagnosis—Shannon had a malformed brain, and would likely not survive ten years.

      Death, the ghost who had always haunted my house, announced his presence.

      Still, Shannon did well. While she was always behind her peers, her abilities surpassed the expectations of her doctors. Four years later, however, the seizures came. She would be walking across our living room and suddenly go limp, crashing to the ground. More testing, more medications, and more insistent bumps in the night from our unwelcome specter.

      A year later my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. But, we were told, it was the least frightening kind. It would be manageable, a lump in the road. Until I was called in to see the doctor mid-surgery. What they found was far more dangerous than what they expected. A cure, however, was still within reach. We soldiered through the hardships of chemo and radiation. Meanwhile, we balanced Shannon’s seizure meds.

      We ignored, as best as we were able, the ghost in the room.

      Eighteen months after my wife’s last treatment I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The macabre assessment of medical professionals about Hodgkin’s is that it is the good cancer. I came out the other side skinnier but just as bald as when I started. We came away relieved, believing that we had won the key battles, and that death would be but a silent guest.

      Two and a half years after the end of my treatment for Hodgkin’s, however, my wife’s breast cancer had metastasized into her back, breaking a vertebra, and just a quarter inch from impinging on her spine. A month of radiation preceded fifteen months in a back brace. At this point the ghost in our house had virtually taken his own seat at the family dinner table. But the rest of us were all still there. Cancer stood 0-3 in our house. You could almost feel sorry for him.

      Just two months after getting out of her back brace, however, my beloved was diagnosed with leukemia. I encouraged her not to be afraid. I told her, Sweetheart, cancer is afraid of you.

      Over the course of the next several months we went through treatments and tests. Each test came back with the worst possible odds. First we discovered the source of the leukemia was the previous treatments. Then we discovered the connected genetic mutations. It was all bad news, save for one thing: my beloved’s sister was found to be a perfect match for a transplant. Two months after the transplant, which was four months after the diagnosis, there was no detectable cancer. We had won again.

      For two months, at least. Leukemia, at least the kind Denise had, is like a cockroach. Not so hard to send scurrying, but hard to keep away. At this point clinical trials were our only option. Clinical trials are Hail Mary passes—a last desperate attempt to defy defeat before the clock runs out. At this point, Death made himself at home in my favorite easy chair and changed the lock on the front door. It was his house, and we were just dying in it.

      Until December 18. That day I tweeted this, Today my wife finally won her battle with cancer. When she passed, the specter of Death in my house did not squeeze her between his icy hands and spirit her away. Instead she slipped through and into the tender, blood-stained hands of her Lord. Ten months later Shannon followed, having attained the victory as well.

      Death still inhabits my home. He has grown more silent, perhaps for a time licking his wounds. But he will come back and try again. And again he will lose. All because two thousand years ago, in an insignificant corner of the Empire, Jesus walked into the new garden of the new world. Now all the world is Jesus’ house, and Death is just waiting in it, waiting to die. Jesus haunts him.

      I have, over these past few years, given more thought to death than I ever thought I would. I have learned, and unlearned much. And I am still learning and unlearning. I heard wisdom as I read through Joseph Bayly’s book. I felt like Joe was sitting beside me in a hospital room, an older, experienced gentleman who had walked with Jesus for all his days. He spoke to me with grace, with honesty, but most of all, with Gospel hope. He spoke from the grave of the grave, even as he spoke from the grace of the grace.

      Reading this book won’t make your loss okay. It won’t take away your sorrow, your longing. It will, however, assure you that Jesus will. We do not bury our dead. We plant them. They will blossom again.

      R. C. Sproul Jr.

      Ascension Presbyterian Church

      Apopka, Florida

      Editor’s Preface

      This edition of Joe Bayly’s View from a Hearse is, in some ways, closer to the first edition of 1969 than the expanded version of 1973. Nearness to tragedy gave the ’69 version its simplicity and wisdom. Still aching from the loss of three sons, Joe wrote a book that could help others

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1