Death
I’ve been thinking about this a lot.
What is death like? My dad almost died once. He was working on a car and was overcome by carbon monoxide. He passed out. Somebody saw him and drug him out to fresh air and he recovered. When asked about it, he said it was really nice. He almost wanted to punch the guy who saved him. Otherwise, no details. I don’t think that my dad was a religious guy. I am not at all sure where he wound up.
All near death stories point to a destination…….a light. Most describe seeing family and friends. Most are pleasant and happy stories. A very few are terrifying. Watch the movie Ghost (Patrick Swayze) sometime.
The bible says that you will “sleep”. You will wake up when Christ returns. It will be just like sleeping at night…there will be no sense of the passage of time. At some point after that believers will be separated from non-believers. Non-believers will go someplace that ranges from unpleasant to horrible beyond understanding.
Believers will go to a perfected world with young healthy perfected bodies. Paradise will be a lot like the world that we know. You will have a young healthy physical body. You will have a job. I will probably be a carpenter………I don’t know what kind of job you should expect if you are a criminal. All of the things that are wrong in this world will be gone. All of the things that are wrong with you will be fixed. You will see and know God in a way that you cannot imagine now. You will understand things that just make no sense here.
Your questions will be answered. I believe that strangers will come up and tell you about how small kindnesses that you passed out……. things that you don’t even remember……..changed their lives.
You will experience a satisfaction unlike anything that you have ever known………. because you will be in exactly the place that you were created for…….you will be doing exactly the thing that you were created to do.
I think that many of the rules in the bible are there to prepare you for the way things will be in paradise. You will experience love in a way that you cannot imagine. You will experience generosity in a way that you cannot imagine. You will experience truth in a way that you cannot imagine.
The bible teaches that our earthly minds cannot fully comprehend what paradise will be like. I accept that I don’t fully understand what it will be like……I just know that I want to be there.
Death as a sailboat. (From Van Dyke……..abridged)
I imagine a beautiful large sailboat at a dock. It is strong, capable, graceful. It sails away and finally disappears over the horizon. Somebody says “Well, it’s gone” and they turn and walk away.
But the sailboat isn’t really gone…….it is just as real, just as strong, capable, and beautiful as it ever was. I just can’t see it from my limited perspective……..from where I’m standing right now.
It isn’t “gone”……..it’s just somewhere else.
My youngest son died just before last Christmas. But; he isn’t “gone”, he is just somewhere else. We will meet again…….and neither of us will need our glasses.