I was four years old when my mother announced the news…
It filled my tiny body with fear …
I would start preschool the next day.
Preschool?
I had lived an entire lifetime without preschool…
I didn’t need preschool…
I was afraid of preschool.
The next day, I hid under the dining room table…
Confident that even the long arm of my mother couldn’t reach me if I stayed under its very center…
I was wrong.
I went to preschool, played games, had fun and made friends…
I thought about that fear of the unknown the other day as I heard a speaker make a startling claim…
“In a month, fourteen of you will be dead.”
The speaker looked around the auditorium.
“In a group this size, in a group this age, statistics say fourteen of you will be dead in a month.”
He paused.
Dead?
“I’ve lived a whole lifetime without dying,” I thought with a smile.
“I don’t need death…”
It is another day in another auditorium…
The speaker is a pastor…
“Statistics prove,” he says, “that over time…over the years, over the decades, over the centuries, over the millennia… the death rate hovers right at 100%.”
Death…
Dying…
Who wants to talk about dying?
And yet Paul says…
For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far… Philippians1:21-23
Death is gain?
Why don’t we always feel the same way?
Are we afraid?
Afraid because we think God’s promises apply only to our life in this world?
Do we doubt that His promise to prosper us applies to all eternity?
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11
Do we doubt that He will be with us even in death?
…neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39
That because of His eternal promise, we can face everything, even death itself, filled with faith, not fear?
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff
, they comfort me. Psalm 23:4
