Some Words on Death and Most Emphatically on Life

Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth,
Before the difficult days come,
And when the years draw near when you say,
"I have no pleaure in them";
While the sun and the light,
The moon and the stars,
Are not darkened,
And the clouds do not return after the rain.
(Ecclesiastes 12:1,2)
Finished a phone call with my folks and grandparents in California, and talked with Grandma as she is still overcoming the natural time of sadness of having lost her mother, almost 86. I quoted Psalm 39:7 to her at the end of the call, and she gave a short sigh which sounded like a release of stress or a commission of power by hearing that verse. "My hope is in you," said the psalmist. Indeed, without that hope all that a man can wait for is death; it comes so stealthily, and yet so predictable and regular, precise and neat. That doesn't mean it came naturally, only that now it is natural. People like my great-grandmother who passed on, died in the flesh, are not forsaken to the grave. Despite the cynicism of this age, the various thoughts of man's so-called rebirths (e.g., the Renaissance and the Enlightenment) have no power over a child of God, who was at first from birth condemned to darkness and a death hole of Hell, but since saved by supernatural actions of Christ now is eternally bonded to his (as Bunyan illustrated in Pilgrim's Progress) summons of salvation, to his God.

Great-grandma is not lost, we didn't lose her; as with all person's transformed in this life, alive once in the flesh, who were able to kneel without pressure and confess Christ as God and Savior, they merely moved away from this old shack to a glorious mansion in Heaven. As Bob Dylan said in Sweetheart Like You, "Your Father has many, many mansions, all with a fireproof floor." Jesus to Martha, whose brother Lazarus died of a sickness, said in John 11: 25, 26, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe in Me?"