Lutherans For Life (LFL) joins so many others in mourning the death of Dr. Maggie Karner. We also give thanks along with them for God’s grace in Christ that has given Maggie victory over death, granted her eternal peace, and will raise her up on the last day. We weep with her family. We rejoice with her family. We pray for God’s strength for them.
Maggie was a friend to LFL, a personal friend to me, a colleague for many years, a mentor, and a witness to life and new life in Jesus. She now understands more than any of us the “far better” of Paul’s desire “to depart and be with Christ” (Philippians 1:23b).
However, before her departure to be with her Savior, she also understood better than most Paul’s words in the next verse, “But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account” (23:4). The dignity of Maggie’s death lay in the dignity of her dying, not on her own terms, but on God’s. She knew that as long as God gave her life, He gave her life purpose. She remained open to God’s “more necessary” as He worked in and through her.
God worked in Maggie’s life through her vocations as a woman, wife, mother, and leader in the church to serve others. God worked in her dying reaching out with the love of Jesus to people like Brittany Maynard who fail to grasp the dignity of the “more necessary.” God worked in her dying by teaching us that sometimes the “more necessary” involves being like Christ, not by serving others, but by allowing others to serve you.
God will continue to be at work. I for one believe that the “more necessary” of Dr. Maggie Karner’s living and dying has only just begun.
“Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints” (Psalm 116:15).
Jim Lamb
Executive Director
Lutherans For Life
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Photo: Posted 1/22/2009 by Rev. Matt Harrison
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Dr. Maggie Karner — voice for life, mercy, religious freedom — dies
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Video: Maggie Karner (edited by Mike Jolley)
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My Mom Just Died Of Brain Cancer. Here’s Why She Opposed Assisted Suicide by Mary Karner
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