President Trump responds to Iranian death threats

On July 13, 2024, Donald Trump nearly died. You remember well that day in Butler, Pennsylvania, when he was speaking at a campaign rally and turned his head just as a sniper shot at him. His bloodied ear and “Fight, fight, fight!” response are now part of American history.

In recent days, Israel has shared new intelligence with the US indicating that Iran has a fresh plan to do what that sniper failed to do. On July 11, Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, promised to avenge the death of his father, writing: “These criminals—whose names are known from top to bottom—will take to their graves the unfulfilled wish of dying peacefully in their beds.”

In response to the new threats, President Trump said, “They want to take out the US leader—me. I’m on every list. I saw this morning, I’m on every single one of their lists. And so far, I guess I’ve been a little bit lucky, but that maybe doesn’t last very long.”

Why Sen. Graham said, “I can’t die now”

Human mortality is much in the news these days, from the sudden deaths of Sen. Lindsey Graham and actor Sam Neill to mass shootings in Toronto, South Carolina, Mississippi, and elsewhere.

After surviving cancer recently, Mr. Neill said, “I’m not, in any way, frightened of dying. It’s never worried me from the beginning. But I would be annoyed because there are things I still want to do.” Actor William Shatner, after surviving stage four melanoma, similarly said, “I’m always asking questions, because the older I get, the more fearful I will be to die with a question on my mind, like ‘What about. . .’ and I don’t have a chance to look it up on Chat GPT!”

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell provided a recent health update after being hospitalized for several weeks, stating that he expects to be back at work in the Senate soon. He told his constituents, “I still have unfinished business to complete on your behalf, and I have every intention of finishing the job you elected me to do.”

According to a new Axios report, Sen. Graham complained of feeling unwell on July 11. He was urged to seek medical attention immediately, but said he would do so Sunday morning after his scheduled appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press.

The senator then joked, “I can’t die now. I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out, and do the Israeli-Saudi normalization.” He passed away a few hours later.

Lessons from an invisible turtle

I was sitting beside our neighborhood pond the other day and watched a turtle lift his (or her) head from the water. Nothing else of its body was visible. It seemed to surface to take a breath, then submerged again.

I have read that some turtles can hold their breath for hours, depending on the species. While I am in no sense a cheloniologist (someone who studies turtles; I had to look it up), I can say that the turtle I was watching did not appear again, as best I could tell, for the fifteen minutes I spent watching for it.

Since I’ve never seen a turtle eating above water, I would guess it was eating whatever it eats in the pond. But it was also much safer under the water than above it. If I were hunting it, I wouldn’t know where to hunt. So long as it was invisible to me, it was safe from me.

It occurred to me that this is one way people relate to death. We deal with it only when we must, then return to living in ways that ignore or minimize its relevance. Or so we think.

“You do not know what tomorrow will bring”

We can ignore death, but it doesn’t ignore us. We can try to postpone it in the pretense that we’re too busy to die, but no one is too busy to die.

James spoke directly to this tendency:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:13–15).

We might think his warning was unnecessary. The mortality rate (except for Enoch and Elijah) is still 100 percent. But death hasn’t come for us yet. And until it does, we can think that it won’t, at least not today.

The better response is to be ready every day to meet God, living as if death were coming today. Then one day, when the Lord returns to our world, or we go to his, we’ll be right.

An appointment tonight in Samarra

There’s an old legend about a Baghdad merchant who sent his servant to the market to buy food. After a few minutes, the servant ran back, pale and trembling. He stammered, “Down in the marketplace, I was pushed by a man in the crowd. I turned around and saw the man was Death. He raised his arm to strike me. Please, Master, lend me your fastest horse so I can get away. I will ride to Samarra, where I can hide. Death will not find me there.”

The merchant lent his fastest horse to the servant, who rode away swiftly. He then went down to the marketplace himself, where he also saw Death standing in the crowd.

“Why did you frighten my servant this morning?” he asked. “Why did you scare him like that?” Death replied, “I was not trying to scare him. I was simply surprised. I was astonished to see him here in Baghdad. You see, I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

Are you ready for yours?