Once there was a cattle rancher who despised religion as something only for wimps. The local pastor had visited him a number of time but got nowhere against the grizzled one's spiritual intransigence. In fact, the last time the preacher had dared approach the ranch house, he had been run off with a shotgun.

The rancher had always taken care of himself. He didn't need any namby-pamby religion stuff to make a go of his life. That is what he taught his three sons, as well.

So the pastor was mighty surprised one day to get an urgent call from the ranch. Could he come out right away and have prayer with Tom, one of the rancher's sons?

Rushing out to the ranch house he found the doctor leaving. "Snake bite," said the doctor. "There's nothing more I can do."

The rancher welcomed the pastor with uncharacteristic warmth and pulled him quickly through the house to a room where Tom was writhing on the bed. "Could you say a prayer for him?" asked the worried father.

He took off his hat, revealing a balding spot the pastor had never seen. Not only that, but he knocked the hats off Dick and Harry, too, standing on the other side of their agonizing brother. And there, in the dimness of that bedroom, the preacher began to pray over Tom: "We thank you, Lord, for sending this rattlesnake to bite Tom, for this is the first time in his life that he has admitted that he needs you. And Lord, we pray for two more rattlesnakes to come along and bite Dick and Harry, so that they, too, might receive this blessing. And then, Lord, we pray for an especially big and ornery cuss of a snake to come along and bite the old man, so that he, too, will know what it means to need you!"

Now, that is probably a prayer we would never dream of praying. Still, the idea is clear. Life begins at death: dying to the trappings of the life around us; dying to the little things that keep us self-absorbed; dying to ourselves in order to find the things that really make us alive.