Session 6: Be Prepared
Martin Down
Read: Chapters 12 and 13
- What practical steps have you taken to prepare for your own incapacity and/or death? Registering a Lasting Power of Attorney, Making a Will, Registering an Advance Decision?
- Have you discussed with your nearest relatives, and written down, your own wishes with regard to your funeral?
- From your own experience, how can we best help people who are going through the process of dying, and how can we best help those in their families who are going through it with them? How can we initiate conversations with them such as we have had these past few weeks?
- Pray for the faith and courage to live the rest of our lives, be they long or short, to the glory God and to bless those around us.
This course is designed for Christian Study Groups, meeting in a trusting environment where people can talk confidentially about their hopes and fears.
Each person should have a copy of the book Talking about Dying, Wilberforce Publications 2017.
It would also be good if people brought Bibles to the meetings of the group to refer to.
The Leader might like to prepare a short Bible Study to lead into prayer at the end of each session, but not so as to inhibit the time or the opportunity for people to express their own views and emotions.
These studies look at the subject in a different order from the book. The book was designed to start from where the average reader was likely to start: with talking about dying with a friend or a doctor. Only later does the book open up the subjects of life after death and prayer for healing.
As Christians we should start with the question of prayer for healing and our faith in the life of the world to come. All our later discussions can then take place in the light of those.