Do You Want to Be Dead or Not?

As a child, I often sat spellbound, listening to my dad weave tales of adventure and intrigue from his many hours working in the morgue of the Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pennsylvania. Dad loved his job of assisting the Deener with autopsy procedures and running labs associated with them.

The morgue, however, is not exactly the jolliest place to spend your time. To keep the job interesting, and maybe to quell their own nerves as they worked in such a silent tomb-like place, the boys working there were always looking for a chance to play a prank on an unsuspecting victim.

In those days only women held the title of nurse; male nurses were called orderlies. On this particular day, a nurse instructed the orderly to take a stretcher with a corpse from the main hospital to the morgue. The man had often performed this duty, albeit, rather reluctantly.

You see, to get from the hospital to the morgue, you had to take a special elevator that only staff had access to. Descending to the ground floor, the doors opened to reveal an underground tunnel about 200 feet long. Along this underground passageway were doors that opened into storage areas, and at the far end of the tunnel was another elevator that led up to the building containing the morgue.

The nervous orderly swallowed hard, looked at the white sheet covering his deceased patient, put his hands on the stretcher, and began the trek to the elevator. Down into the vacant stillness of the tunnel he went, his deceased companion before him. Anxious to be rid of the unnerving place, he pushed the stretcher as quickly as possible along the dingy corridor. His eye was on the far elevator door when suddenly a soft moan rose from the stretcher.

Every nerve in the orderly’s body woke up and stood at attention! Did he really hear that noise, or was his imagination getting the better of him? He shook his head and pushed the gurney a little faster.

Another groan, louder this time, echoed in the tunnel walls, and there was a slight movement under the sheet.

There was no mistaking the sound this time, and no way of escape, so he kept pushing that stretcher!

Suddenly, the dead body in front of him sat up, still covered with the sheet, and a voice said, “Hey, buddy! Don’t you hear me?”

The panic-stricken orderly reached out, gave the corpse one resounding whack over his head, and yelled,
“If you wanna be dead, be dead!”

Surprised by the attack, the corpse quickly pulled the sheet from his head. Rubbing his aching noggin, he grinned; he was just a co-worker, alive as he could be.

And as far as I know, that man never said a word about the headache I am sure he lived with for the rest of his shift and possibly beyond.

The young orderly and his prankster friend make me think of my struggle with my sinful nature.

When I gave my life to Jesus, I learned that my flesh was supposed to be dead, buried in a silent tomblike place.

It sounds good in theory. Easy even.

Oh boy, was I wrong!

I learned very quickly that my crucified self has this habit of trying to come back to life when I least expect it.

A temptation presents itself, and as my mind plays with the idea, I hear a moan from the gurney. Sometimes I ignore the sound until it comes again, louder, trying to get my attention. My old fleshly corpse is ultimately hoping I will let it sit up and take over.

The noise awakens me to my struggle. I become frightened and a little angry. That’s when I feel the Spirit’s nudging, and taking a deep breath, I whack that old nature with all my might. My words are slightly different than the orderly from decades past, but the emotion is the same.

“I want you to be dead. Now stay dead!”

The struggle is ever so real, but so is the Spirit of God. And I find as I follow close behind Him, the corpse on the stretcher doesn’t have as much power over me as she used to.

It seems the secret to keeping her dead is to make sure I stay right on the heels of the Holy Spirit every day.

If only I wouldn’t get so distracted by the tunnel and what’s behind the storage room doors that I forget to keep up!

 

“…Let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves.

 The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions.

Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.”

Gal. 5:16-17, 25 NLT