Today I want to talk with you for a bit about a really cheery topic. Death.
Wait! Don’t go away just yet, stay with me.
Recently I was at a funeral. The mother of a friend of mine passed away and there were hundreds of people who came to say their goodbyes and be with the family. The ceremony went on for hours.This woman had lived a life that had powerfully blessed so many, generations of people, and yet enough tears were shed to fill a bath tub. And they were not tears of joy. People were super sad and mourning. That’s how it is when someone we love dies, we’ve all been there. It feels like a part of us dies too.
As I watched the proceedings going on I was struck with this thought: the reason this is all so painful, and nothing that is said really helps make it much better, is because death makes no sense. I mean it. Death makes no sense to us as human beings. Sure, we’ve seen plenty of it, and we know that everyone of us will die some day, but still, death makes no sense to us and we can’t quite rationalize our feelings away. Even when we believe that our loved ones had faith in God and we will see them again one day in eternity, this death thing sucks.
And I think this is because we, as humans, created in the image of an eternal and forever God, were also created to live forever. That’s true. That’s what the Bible teaches. We were created to live forever in a perfect relationship with God and rule and reign over his creation and be with him in perfection. So when that is what we were “built” for, we still long to live forever and death makes no sense.
But there is hope.
And as powerful as death has been in the history of the human race, hope is even more powerful if the object of our hope is bigger, more powerful than death.[clickToTweet tweet=”As powerful as death has been in the history of the human race, Hope is even more powerful!” quote=”As powerful as death has been in the history of the human race, Hope is even more powerful!”]
As a Christian I believe the Bible teaches that all rebellion against God and his ways is called sin. And every person that has ever lived in one way or another (or in a million ways) has tried to live as if they were actually God, and live as if the real God were just there on the sidelines waiting to help out in a pinch. That is called sin. Acting like we are God. Trying to create a life apart from him where I rule over pretty much everything in my life, is what separated me, and all of us from God (the source of life) in the first place.
That’s why people die. Because of sin.
It was not God’s original plan, remember that I said God created us to live and be with him forever. But when we ourselves choose to walk away from that plan, choose to live as “god” over myself, I am separated from his life source and the “wages”, if you will, for that is death.
Now back to this hope thing. But what if God himself, in one grand gesture, fixed this sin and death problem? What if he took the result for everyone’s sin, which is death, upon himself? What if God in the flesh, that’s who Jesus is, stepped in and died in our place? And what if he then proved that death was ultimately defeated by coming back to life? That would be amazing, right? That’s what Jesus did. He himself dealt with our sin and death problem once and for all by exchanging his perfect, non-rebellious life, in place of our own. And God, his father and ours, accepted this. And Jesus pronounced at that point, “it is finished!”
Now we can live with the hope that even as I still try and pretend that I am God and rule my own life, that God accepts me, forgiven and standing there with Jesus. Relationally things are now restored back to the way God originally created them to be. We can live here and now in a close relationship with God with no shame. And even though these earthly bodies pass away, our souls and our spirits do not. The real you and me once again lives forever. That gives me hope! Not just the hope that I’ll see my mom and dad again some day, but hope for this life and the afterlife, that I can once again be and live close to God in the way that he created us to be.
So if for you, like me, death makes no sense, the next best time to put your hope in the life that Jesus died to give us is now.
Leave any thoughts, questions or comments below and I’ll interact with you on this.
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