HEBREWS 2:14-15
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
TO PONDER
Have you ever been in a group discussion where people are discussing the way they would prefer to die. If you have had a close friend or member of your family die a slow, possibly painful, death, you most likely would not like that to be something that you would have to go through. On the other hand, if you had a close friend or member of your family die very suddenly without warning (for example from an accident or a medical incident such as a heart attack, stroke or diabetic coma), you may feel cheated in that you were unable to say good bye or to resolve some important issue with them.
Lots of people have suggested that the best way to die is in your sleep, so that you feel nothing and just wake up in heaven. This is good for you, but it again leaves your loved ones wishing that they had had more precious time with you before you died.
Based on our own experiences of seeing loved ones and other people dying, we may all have different preferences of how we would like to die. But few of us look forward to dying, unless, of course, our living here on earth has become unbearable.
But our dying is also something we don’t like to think about, because we may not have a clear view of what happens to us after our death. (Just think of the number of people who cannot or don’t make a will because the idea of their dying brings unpleasant feelings.) The general view of our society is that we hope we have been good enough that God will accept us into heaven when we die. But that raises the question of whether we have been good enough. What is the pass mark?
Then Jesus comes along and says He has some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that no matter how good you are, even if you were a better person than Saint Mother Teresa, you could not achieve God’s pass mark for getting into heaven. The good news is that Jesus sat the exam for us all and He did achieve God’s pass mark. He is now handing out graduation certificates at no cost to all who request one.
However, there is one little catch; you also have to accept Jesus’s death for you. Just as Jesus passed the exam for you, He also died for you. You now have effectively died, with Him, to the life you lived by your own abilities, and you now live by the power of Holy Spirit living in you to live the new resurrected life Jesus won for you.
Your physical death is no longer something fearful, but just the doorway into a new life forever in the presence of the Heavenly Family.
As we live our new resurrected life on this earth, we grow in learning to trust God’s love for us and live by His promise to be always with us. So that means that we can then be sure that our loving God will be right beside us in our dying with His full support and encouragement. Just as we entrust each moment of each day into the care of our loving God, so we should be able to entrust our dying into His care also. This takes away the fear of how God is going to orchestrate our transferal from this life to life forever with Him. And we can trust God that He will using our dying to fulfil His purposes in touching the lives of others who are there to share in the first part of this Journey.
Can we make a decision to not fear our dying, but every time this fear raises its head, we hand it over to our loving God to deal with it?
Prayer: Heavenly Family, Thank You that Jesus died as a human being for all of humanity and then rose again with a new resurrected human body as a guarantee that all who accept this fee gift will also live with Jesus in eternity as His brothers and sisters. Thank You that we no longer need fear our death, but when we do succumb to fear, please remind us again of all Your promises that You have already accepted us into Your family forever. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping