Notable Deaths

By David Faust

It grabs attention when famous people die.  

The year 2025 is less than three-fourths over, but an on-line CBS News article titled “Notable Deaths in 2025” mentions dozens of well-known individuals who have died already this year. Among others, the list includes: 

• Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family 
• Pope Francis 
• Charlie Kirk 
• James Lovell, an astronaut who flew into space four times and circled the moon but never walked on it 
• Musicians and pop stars Connie Francis, Ozzy Osbourne, Roberta Flack, Chuck Mangione, Sly Stone, and Brian Wilson, a founding member of the Beach Boys 
• Extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner, who in 2012 became the first human to break the sound barrier in a high-altitude free-fall parachute jump 
• Political commentator David Gergen, who worked as an adviser to four Presidents, and TV journalist Bill Moyer 
• Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Parker, boxing legend George Foreman, pro wrestler Hulk Hogan, figure skater/commentator Dick Button, and comedian/play-by-play announcer Bob Ueker 
• Actors Gene Hackman, Robert Redford, and Val Kilmer, “Dr. Kildare’s” Richard Chamberlain, “Laugh-In’s” Ruth Buzzi, “M*A*S*H’s” Loretta Swit, “Cheers’” George Wendt, “The Cosby Show’s” Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Jay North (“Dennis the Menace”), and Loni Anderson, the blonde actress who starred in the sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati” 

Approaching Deadline 

Deadlines are an unpleasant but inescapable part of life. The time comes when bills must be paid, work finished, assignments turned in, lights turned off. In the magazine business, deadlines never disappear, they just give way to new ones. 

Some say the term deadline originated during the Civil War, when soldiers held in prison camps were shot on sight if they crossed a line drawn in the sand outside the prison fence. 

We all face a different sort of deadline: the moment when we cross the line from time to eternity. George Bernard Shaw quipped, “Death has rather impressive statistics: one out of one dies.”  

To the young, death seems distant; but like an early autumn sunset, the shadow of death overtakes us sooner than we expect. Death can be as close as the faulty turn of a steering wheel or the sudden movement of a blood clot. Healthy choices might postpone it, but death is a powerful magnet pulling us downward toward the grave. Eventually it grasps even its most resistant prey. Moses lived to the ripe old age of 120, but he wrote that our days “quickly pass, and we fly away” (Psalm 90:10, New International Version). 

Living Hope 

Most deaths don’t make headlines. Most of us will die a plain, ordinary death. There will be a dignified but unspectacular funeral. A few flowers, the Twenty-Third Psalm read by a preacher, and somber friends dabbing their eyes with tissues.  

But wait. There’s no such thing as a “plain, ordinary death.” When it’s yours, it is singularly important. When it happens to someone you love, you can’t just shrug it off. 

And God doesn’t shrug it off either. Jesus’ crucifixion wasn’t a plain, ordinary death; it was a supreme act of grace. His resurrection can relieve our fear of death (Hebrews 2:14-15) and open the door to “living hope” (1 Peter 1:3), which is good news for all who live under sin’s death sentence (Romans 5:1-21). 

Coroners sometimes perform a post-mortem to determine the cause of death. It might be wise to conduct our own “pre-mortems” to make sure death doesn’t catch us unprepared. Only Christ Jesus can keep us secure when we arrive at life’s final deadline. 

David Faust serves as contributing editor of Christian Standard and senior associate minister with East 91^st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is the author of Honest Questions, Honest Answers.