The Intruder

“I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’

‘Where, O death, is your victory?
    Where, O death, is your sting?’

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” (I Corinthians 15:50-58 NIV)

A late colleague of mine used to say that death is an intruder.  Most of us try hard not to think about our mortality, even though death takes place all around us.  Just in the past week, my cousin passed away, a neighbor’s mother died, as did our neighbor across the street.  And last night I received a message from a student that a dear friend of hers is now receiving hospice care. 

As I told someone the other day, while death is all around, we each find it hard to imagine it ever happening to us. So we often live in denial. But the reality is death will continue to intrude on our lives, so we have a choice: We can ignore it out of fear and loathing, or we can acknowledge the truth that our earthly bodies will pass away at some point, perhaps sooner rather than later.  Unlike what we might think, we have no guarantee of a long life.

We have just celebrated the resurrection of Jesus and with it the promise of our own path to Eternity through Him who overcame death. Like our own death, our resurrection to new life can seem surreal to us. We can believe it will happen, but it is hard to imagine. Yet, in this fact lay our hope and the cure to the fear of dying.  As C.S. Lewis writes in The Last Battle, the final book in his Chronicles of Narnia series: “But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

When we can contemplate our deaths in this way, the sting of death—the seeming finality of it—is removed.  For we know that for those following Jesus, it is in reality only the beginning of life, not the end.

Today, don’t fear death’s intrusion on your life.  It is a certainty for us all, but it doesn’t have to frighten us or lead us to despair.  For in the Resurrection we find hope and reassurance that our death or that of someone else (if they are a believer in Jesus) is not the end of the story, but, in fact, just the very beginning of it.  

© Jim Musser 2016