"You haven't updated your blog in a couple weeks," Blake warned me. He's behind me right now playing Super Mario on Nintendo Wii. He's slightly better at it than I am. "This summer just needs to end," he told me the other day. Traci's best friend's mom just died of cancer, Blake's uncle has been diagnosed with cancer, and my cousin Megan's father-in-law came down with cancer and had a stroke after the surgery. He's hanging on by a thread. It's a terrifying time for many, and 2013 proves to be one of the worst summers in my experience to date. So many people are dying, getting sick, and losing loved ones that it's just nauseating to think about.
Isaac and I were out on the balcony a few nights ago, drinking Scotch out of the bottle and talking about all these things. He has a peace regarding his mother despite the cancer she's fighting, but his brother's having a far more difficult time bearing such a burden. Isaac pondered why some people fear death while others have no problem with it. I suggested it's because death is the end of all that we know: from birth to death, that's our experience, and what comes after is unknown. We speculate, conjecture, and take on faith what we think might lie around the corner, but there's no proof that anyone's right about anything. We simply don't know what awaits us after our final, haggard breaths. There's a certain terror in that, the fear of the unknown. I believe that there is such a thing as an afterlife, and that it's beautiful for those who've been reconciled with their Maker, but I can't prove to skeptics that I'm right, and nor do I try to. It's something I take on faith.
I've often wondered how God looks at death. What are our deaths like from God's perspective? To him, our lives are mere vapors. We're born and we die, with a little bit of time in between. Death entered the human experience as a curse from God's hand, a much-deserved judgment, but for those who have been reconciled with him, death has lost its sting. When we who are in Christ die, we don't face emptiness or nothingness; we don't face torment and torture; in a sense, we don't even die. Death has lost its sting, and Jesus promised that those who belong to him will never even taste death. I can't help but take such promises at face value. When we who are in Christ die, we transition, move from one plane of existence to another. My mom has told me often of being at the bedside of a dying relative, and right before she expired she handed her husband something invisible, said it was a piece of an angel, and then she smiled and closed her eyes and died. Perhaps when death comes to us, God doesn't let us go through it alone; perhaps he sends angels to comfort us and to carry us home. I don't know. But I take comfort in the thought that death isn't the end, that those who know God in Christ have the promise that when this present life is over, a new, joyous, and even more abundant life begins.
No comments:
Post a Comment