Death...and Some of His Friends

So, I have been thinking a lot about death lately...and NO (!) not because I have been watching Dexter or listening to my favorite band Coldplay sing "Death and All His Friends". And I haven't even been thinking about my own eventual death necessarily...just death in general I guess. I imagine it is something most people don't like to talk about....let alone even think about, but for me it seems to run through my brain's thought-cycle at least two or three times a day. It's one of life's two unavoidable guarantees right? Death and taxes? Well, I suppose one could find a way to avoid taxes during their life, but not death. It seems to have an uncanny ability for tracking people down.

As a child, whenever I would lay down to sleep at night, I would always avoid laying on my side, because I hated for my ear to be on the pillow. The reason for this odd behavior was that when my ear rested on the pillow, I could actually hear my heart beating. Try it sometime....it sounds like someone is walking through a pile of leaves, slowly, but very purposefully. Well, my mind always imagined it was the Grim Reaper coming to get me. I never knew where he was (except that his location was packed with fallen leaves), but I knew that with his steady pace he would get to me eventually. I would pray that he had started thousands and thousands of miles away so that it would take him forever to find me, but I had no way of knowing whether he had started his walk in Moscow or Miami. So i slept on my back (and still do).

But, the fact remains that even as a child, I understood that eventually my life would come to an end, just like everyone else's. And that thought scares people. To be honest, it weirds me out a little bit too, even now. One second you're there...eating a cheeseburger, driving to the mall, trying to fall asleep on the plane when the person next to you won't shut up...and then, just like that, you're gone. All the appointments you had made, the leftovers in the fridge, the shows you still hadn't watched on the DVR, the vacation you had already planned and paid for... all made pointless in an instant (if they weren't already pointless before). People will be shocked and saddened and will say nice things about you, and then life will go on for everyone else. They will remember you from time to time, see a picture of you and say "Awe..." and then go back to planning their vacations and eating their leftovers.

As for you...well, you'll be somewhere else entirely. As a Christian who completely believes that our life on earth is just the beginning (and if, by chance, you don't believe the same as me, simply imagine that I am actually right for once for the sake of this blog), I know that when the Grim Reaper does finally find me through all the leaf piles, I will find myself standing before God. That has to be quite possibly the wildest one or two seconds in existence. One second - eating cheeseburger, next second - standing in front of the Creator of the universe. This thought used to terrify me greatly. I used to think, "What if God asks me why I should be allowed to get into Heaven, and I can't think of anything to say? Or I say something and the words come out wrong? Or He just doesn't like my answer?" These questions plagued me because I didn't want my eternity hinging on my ability to speak in a high pressure situation. Thankfully, I now know that God won't be standing there waiting for me to slip up so He can banish me to Hell. I know that my eternity hinges not on my words, but on the gift of salvation that God gave me through the blood of His Son. I know that when I do finally stand before Him, I will hear the words "Well done, My child" instead of "Wait, who are you again?"

Every day it seems, my Internet homepage, MSN, is telling me of some celebrity or athlete who has passed away. Sometimes it is expected...old age, cancer, etc....and other times it completely shocks me...overdose, car accident, getting gunned downed outside a club. As a movie lover, it always makes me sad to see movie stars, old or young, pass away. Even though you never met them, you still have that connection with them. But what saddens me most is that without fail, every time I read one of those stories, I think to myself, "Right now, they are standing before God and probably wish they could go back and relive those 75 years of their life so that they could change what they are about to hear in the next few seconds." It hit me hard recently when the actor Dennis Hopper passed away. I wasn't necessarily a huge fan of his (although who didn't love him in Speed?), but as I read through the articles about him and his life, I was hit with a sadness I wasn't expecting. Here was a man, loved by God and family and friends, who is now facing a God he never probably expected to be facing, and will likely hear the words no person would ever truly want to hear. And the saddest part is that it was preventable.

God sent His Son to Earth to take the punish of death for us so that we wouldn't have to suffer the consequences that we deserve for living crummy lives. Let's face it, we all think we are "good people" but each and every one of us knows that deep down "good" is the last word we would use to describe ourselves. We are scum. Well, I am at least...I will admit to it. God knew that, and loved us enough to do something about it. So He did. And all we have to do is believe it - have faith that Jesus was who He claimed to be, that He died on the cross to take the punishment for our mistakes, and that He rose again, giving us the opportunity to spend our eternity with Him after we die. It seems so simple, yet the Bible makes it clear that most people will choose not to put their faith in God. They will find other ways to live their life, other things or people to put their faith in. The road to Hell is wide and many will go down it because it is the easy road...the "do nothing" road, but the road to Heaven is narrow and few of us will find it. It's not because we are better than the rest, but because we recognize that we aren't better than anyone, and that only God can make us right. And when He does, we realize that no matter how bizarre and frightening the idea of death might be sometimes, we no longer have a reason to fear what comes after, and we have even more of a reason to make our lives count for something before the Grim Reaper finally catches up with us.