Joanna, a freshman on my floor, always used to talk loudly on the phone to friends back home. We all participated in these conversations, as she seemed unable to stay in her room as she reminisced and gave advice and laughed, pacing up and down the hall past every door. No one could deny that Joanna loved her friends. Not only would we hear the phone conversations, but she would tell anyone who would listen the stories of their adventures together and why she loved them all so much, detailing the quirky and endearing specifics of each personality. Before too long, all of us felt as if we knew a group of people living in Atascadero, California who we had never actually met.
This was how I came to know Clayton. When Joanna talked to Clayton she laughed just as much and sometimes even more than she did during conversations with other friends. But something was different about calls with Clayton. The difference could not be noted during the calls themselves, in the topic of conversation or the tone. Rather, the change came afterwards, in Joanna herself. On a typical day, Joanna played the role of floor clown, never missing an opportunity to make others laugh or give an unexpected hug. After talking to Clayton, her actions took on purpose, her love became more serious, a strength and a confidence overcame her insecurities. Her silliness adapted a shadow of thoughtfulness. She grew deeper. This is the shift I can now recognize as her change from a girl simply living in the present to a young woman conscious of the truth of eternity and the weight of heaven. The hugs and the laughter didn’t change, just the heart behind them.
Her friend Clayton was dying of leukemia. Diagnosed for the fourth time since childhood, he decided to give everything to God and live the rest of his life, whether long or short, without treatment for the cancer. He died March 16, 2009 after eighteen years of life.
And he did live. In the course of his short life, he shared his story with thousands, inspiring and encouraging people who he had never met, people like me, to live the life they have been given for God and God alone. When she returned from celebrating Clayton’s life with her friends back in California, Joanna shared with me a video made by a church media group who had heard of Clayton’s decision. In the video, which was completed only a day before his death and played at the funereal, Clayton’s words have the power to convict everyone who still has life left to live:
Life for a lot of people means a lot of different things. Life for some person can mean the usual: go to school, go to college, get a good job, get a good husband or wife, get a good family, get a good car, get a good home, get a good everything, and then have a good memorial service…One of the questions I get asked the most is, ‘Hey Clayton, are you scared?’ Yeah. I’m scared. I’m terrified. But I’m not scared of cancer. I’ve had it most of my life, I know what’s going to happen. And I’m not scared to die either, ‘cause I know where I’m going when I die. I’m scared for everybody else. I’m scared for those who don’t know where they’re going when they die, I’m scared for those that might think they know where they’re going when they die, but they really don’t. And I’m especially scared for those of you who are distracted by this world…I have the luxury of knowing when I’m going to die, and you don’t…It’s not hard for me to be thankful for every breath that I have because it was given to me by God. (http://www.thedoorpost.com
I heard the echo of Clayton’s voice in George Whitefield’s sermon The Nature and Necessity of Self Denial. According to Whitefield, self-denial means that “we must make our own wills no standard for action, but ‘whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, we must do all’ not merely to please ourselves, but ‘to the glory of God.’ Not that we are therefore to imagine we are to have no pleasure in anything we do…but pleasing ourselves must not be the principle but rather only the byproduct of our actions” (pg 291-292). To do otherwise would be living life for those things which Clayton called distractions. To live for ourselves, says Whitefield, is to only grab at a life that would not be worth living even if we did achieve everything we thought we wanted. Clayton gives us an example of Whitefield’s self-denial. If Clayton thought that pleasing himself was the point and principle of his life, then it would have been in vain. Even and most especially in death he gave glory to God, at a time and in a situation when and where most people would say he had a right to be bitter and selfish and angry.
Instead, Clayton responded with the same prayer as Whitefield: “O Jesu, thine was an innocent will, and yet Thou renounced it. Teach us also, O our Saviour, to submit our wills to thine, in all evils which shall be brought upon us, and in everything enable us to give thanks, since it is thy blessed will concerning us” (pg 292). For Clayton, death was only a chance to continue the submission of his will that had begun in life. He did not despair in the face of death because he was reconciled to his Savior, submitting his will to God’s plan not only in living but in dying. He gave thanks for the opportunity given to him through his situation to bring others to relationship with the only One who gives hope in the first breath and the last.
Clayton’s reasons for hope in his death and his fear for others in life also echoes the same wisdom that was given to Whitefield. Both Whitefield and Clayton, hundreds of years apart, recognized that spiritual sickness and death is much more serious than physical disease and mortality. They warn us of the dangers of getting so caught up in the distractions, the “sensual pleasures” of this world, that we “are not so much able to lift up…eyes or hearts to heaven” (pg 294). Clayton was afraid for us. Whitefield was afraid for us. Forgetting our only true reason for living seems to be a danger into which it is easy to fall. We quickly forget that not only are our lives not our own, but that they are only a breath in the wind. But there is a hope bigger than our sickness. Clayton had security in knowing where he was going, in knowing that every breath came from God, in knowing that even if his body was not miraculously healed, his soul had already received the most precious healing of all. In Whitefield’s words, “Jesus Christ, like a good physician, in the Gospel doctrine of self-denial, presents us with a spiritual medicine to heal our sickness…And behold, you shall be made perfectly whole” (pg 296).
The hope continues. Though neither Clayton nor Whitefield can tell us of their final joy, Whitefield attempted to capture a glimpse of their destination:
Think, think with what unspeakable glory those happy souls are now encircled who when on earth were called to deny themselves as well as we, and were not disobedient to that call…the Son of Man with his glorious retinue of departed saints sitting and solacing themselves in eternal joys, and with unspeakable comfort looking back on their past sufferings and self-denials as so many glorious means which exalted them to such a crown. (pg 299)
So, not only do we have a Healer in life to cure our spiritual sickness, but we also have hope in a heaven more wonderful than anything we could even try to imagine. While the first hope might make our suffering bearable in life, the second hope makes our suffering worth more than even life itself. Through accepting the grace of the Savior that makes the submission of our wills possible, we can join Clayton and Whitefield in the glorious place they now call home.
George Whitefield, in his lifetime and into the present, called for a complete and necessary surrender of our wills to the greater will of God. Through powerful words and moving sermons, he brought the voice of eternity into the limited scope of daily concerns. Clayton called for us, through his example and his words, to remember that we aren’t living for ourselves and that all our actions mean nothing unless we are living for eternity. He wanted others to come to the same realization he had found in dying in order to apply it to the way they were living. The words of a third man complete their testimony: “Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25, NIV). I think we should follow their example.
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