Thinking about…death

Posted on by Terry Enns

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been slowly making my way through Nancy Guthrie’s O Love That Will Not Let Me Go:  Facing Death with Courageous Confidence in God.  I’ve been encouraged by the biblical thinking of godly men about death.  This morning I read this from John Eaves, a believer who was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer — who died three months after he preached this message.  Here he is meditating on Hebrews 11:32 – 12:3:

What I find fascinating about this passage is that in many ways it is the most realistic view of the Christian life in the Bible.  Why?  Because it presents life as it really is for a follower of Jesus rather than how we would want it to be — bull of ease, prosperity, and blessing.

The first few sentences in the paragraph are predictable.  Miracles are performed — the dead raised to life, people delivered from certain death.  It is an incredibly powerful encounter with God when he breaks into human circumstance.  Suddenly, the tone changes beginning in the second part of Hebrews 11:35.  God’s people are being openly violated, persecuted, tortured, beaten, and killed for their faith.  They are deprived of their earthly comforts, disoriented, and destitute.  Many died, for no other reason than identifying themselves as servants of God and following his directives.

Could it be that in America we have been sold short when it comes to understanding the Christian life in the fullness it represents?  Yes, we have.  We seek the easy way.  We forget that throughout biblical history, trials, hardship, and death are equally a part of our witness to an unbelieving world as are healing and deliverance and divine blessing.

Yesterday, I read of the death of Jay and Katrina Erickson — a twenty-something couple with two young children — who died serving Christ as missionary pilots in Zambia.  Less than two months ago he wrote this on his blog:

Oddly enough, I (Jay) have been pondering the concept of death since arriving at Chitokoloki. Living next door to a bush hospital, we hear quite clearly the wails of mourning with each death. And these occur frequently, being about every other day.  In addition, I have been reading through Israel’s wanderings through the wilderness and all the times God’s wrath was poured out such that each time thousands were consumed, bitten, swallowed, or otherwise perished. Still again, I have been reading Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis, which though a fictional work, deals philosophically with death. Even in eating meat here when I saw the creature alive that morning reminds me of the topic.
I did not plan the correlation, but it caused me to think along these lines and realize again in a new way that there is nothing sad about the death of a Christian. The only sadness (and I do not intend to belittle this aspect) is in the loss of companionship by those left behind. And yet, to contrast this, the level of tragedy is so vast for the passing of an unbeliever. To borrow from physics, it seems the “equal and opposite reaction.”
It warms my heart to hear the frequent and fervent preaching of the Gospel here. Perhaps it is the real presence of death here that we seem so surgically removed from in the USA which is the motivation.  At any rate, I hope it will inspire me to get over those inhibitions which so easily hinder me from speaking.
I will close with a quote from C.S. Lewis which is at the foundation of my thinking: “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” And I know that when this body dies, my soul will get a new one.

Jonathan Parnell is right.  Jay and Katrina didn’t waste their lives.

And today I heard of a local college student who was killed in a car accident involving alcohol.  It’s uncertain if he knew Christ.  Words that are being spoken about his death are things like the expected, “tragedy,” “waste,” “unbelievable sorrow,” and “foolishness.”

What I’ve been thinking about today is the contrast between the death of a believer who lived life well and the death of an unbeliever.  For one there is hope and consolation; for the latter, there is only inconsolable remorse, regret, and pain.  When a believer dies there may be momentary grief, but there is also the consolation that for that one, the pain and suffering is past and is now viewed as momentary and light.  There is no hope like that for the unbeliever.

But mostly what I’ve been thinking about is that because of the brevity and uncertainty of life, it’s always worth thinking about death and its implications.

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Published by Terry Enns