By Chris WittsSunday 17 Nov 2024Morning Devotions with Chris WittsFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
As I get older, I find I do forget some things. My memory is not as good as it used to be, but there is one event that I will never forget. And that is my mother’s death. My mother died aged 86 on the 19th of May 2006 here in Sydney. I’ll always remember that day, arriving in the nursing home about 1:15am in the morning to find that my mother had passed away about 15 minutes earlier. She hadn’t been well but her death shocked and saddened me and that’s a normal thing.
And now the reason I’m telling you that is that maybe you’ve lost your mother as well, and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.
Death is inevitable, is there anything after?
Now this is quite a personal issue, isn’t it? And I want to try and answer the question – what happens when we die? Because death is something we must all face. No exercise or diet plan or meditation or money can avoid this. We don’t speak of death very much today, do we? Indeed, we try and deny its reality. We want to think of other things. Some people say it’s very morbid to think about that – we deny death. But a few centuries ago it was very different.
You know, way back, perhaps in the 17th and 18th centuries. Now the blinds were drawn, straw would actually be put on the road to deaden the sound of cart wheels and the horse’s feet. The servants, as well as the family members, wore black armbands, black veils and heavy black clothes, and people mourned for many months. But today, of course, as I said, we avoid this subject. But you know, the statistics say differently that 60 million people die each year. So many people every minute are ushered into eternity. So I think we do need to talk about it.
Back in 1987 Billy Graham wrote a book called Facing Death and the Life After, and he said, when death separates us from someone we love, there is a time when we think no one has suffered like we have. But Billy Graham said that grief is universal.
Now I’m sure that you’ve lost someone close to you, but the big question, I think, is am I ready to die? Have I accomplished what I need to do or what I’d like to do or if I died prematurely? Are there things left undone? Elizabeth Lula Ross, well known she was the Swiss born Chicago psychiatrist who’s written some marvelous things about death, says that death can show us the way for when we know and understand that our time on Earth is limited, that we have no way of knowing when it’ll be over.
Then, she said, we must live each day as if it were the only one we had. I also believe the Bible has some answers, and there’s an amazing verse written some time in the third century BC. I think in Ecclesiastes 3:11. And it simply says that God has set eternity in the hearts of men. What does that mean? I think it means that people have always known that death is not the end.
There’s something about us that says, yeah, there must be more. Think for a moment about the Egyptian culture. About 4000 years ago, here were a race of people who were obsessed by life after the grave. Egyptians prepared for the afterlife. There’s been studies, of course, done about the tombs and the pyramids show them that there were something like 100,000 people working to build the tombs because the Egyptians felt that something happened after death, they wanted to be ready for it.
So they understood in the core of their own heart that death was not the end. So the archaeologists, the anthropologists tell us that from the beginning of time, history is full of proof that we’ve had people who have had this awareness about eternity. Well, for the Christian, the Bible says that after death we go to be with Christ, where we are at home with the Lord. So for the Christian, death doesn’t mean this separation from the Lord, because it was the Apostle Paul who said, as long as we are at home in the body, we’re away from the Lord, but we’d prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
Another thing the scripture says, is that death has no power over us. It can’t separate us from the love of God in Christ. Jesus our Lord puts it in Romans 8. So I think the challenge is to be ready. Be prepared for death. Don’t deny it. Don’t not talk about it. Understand that with Jesus Christ, He offers you eternal life today.
Let’s Pray
Our heavenly Father, thank you for that very positive message. Thank you that we can be ready for death as we trust in you and your Son Jesus. Amen.