I find that i have these death-related thoughts more when i'm pregnant or have just given birth. Maybe it's because life is just so inextricably tied to death.
My thoughts are not so much on life-after-death (that part is supposed to be gr8!), more about the moment of dying and the preceding moments.
I wonder if it would be scary.
How would that moment be like?
How would my moment be like?
How would i be able to take the pain of losing someone i love?
Why have a new life, when it invariably ends in death?
When i was young, my greatest fear was my mother dying. I remember lying awake, unable to sleep, worrying about it. I remember wishing i would die first, so i would never have to experience the pain of losing her. I remember scratching at imaginary itch till my skin was raw and bleeding so that the physical pain would distract me from the mental torture (haha, and we thought the emo culture was something new). When i couldn't take it anymore i told her my fears, but her simple reply of "everybody dies, no use worrying" did little to alleviate my fears.
And then there's the issue of mode of death.
I think passing away peacefully while asleep is the best. From unconsciousness to paradise. Sounds good.
I think heart attack is scary. So is choking. It's the intensity of that moment, and not being able to ask for help, because every part of the body is involuntarily struggling (futilely) to survive.
Even scarier than that to me is drowning - the prolonged and intense terror and panic, the helplessness and hopelessness. And in the same league is being trapped under a collapsed building.
I know after that we get to see Jesus face to face, but will we get the comfort of his tangible presence at those moments? Must those necessarily be moments of fears and terrors? Or will they be sweetened with His presence?
The only thing worse than these is having someone i love being in those situations.
Soon after Glory's birth, i had an awful sleepless night imagining what would happen if the flat collapses. Imagine having your baby injured and trapped and hungry and thirsty, and knowing there's nothing you can do. Imagine you can hear her, but not see. Her crying would be heartbreaking, but the silence would be even more unnerving! And do you say, "it's all right, baby, you'll be ok."? And i wondered if my faith would stand the test.
It was futile worrying, it was baseless, i was exhausted, yet i couldn't stem the stream of dreadful thoughts.
I thought it was God prompting me to pray for victims of such disasters. On hindsight, it's quite probable coz i remember reading about some earthquake/ landslide the next few days. It was a call to intercede, and also a reminder to me that without intimacy, trust and faith, everything is scary.
i wonder if death is in actual fact scary, or it's just that we have over-sensationalised it because we have an intrinsic fear of the unknown. The accounts of death in the bible doesn't seem as sensational and emotional. it's usually just statements of venue and time... "sarah lived to be 127 years old. She died at Kiriath Arba." "Abraham lived 175 years. then Abraham breathed his last... buried at...". So matter of fact. No elaboration.
Is the fear of death something we are increasingly gripped by as we grow older, due to incomplete understanding and fallacies and imagination?
But then again, death is obviously used as a punishment, (Eg in Gen 38, Exodus ) so it can't be anything great either...
Does it hold so much mysterious terror because it is an unknown?
Before jumping off the bungee platform, i reasoned that many before me have jumped and survived, so i was able to jump without further hesitation. When confronted with the unavoidability of labour, i comforted my self with the fact that billions of women before me have survived child birth. I guess we could say the same about dying - billions have died, and the rest who haven't will too. Just that no one actually lived to tell the rest of us about the process. Which is one of my reasons for wanting to die before loved ones - just to go before them, and kinda make sure it's safe first.
Which i suppose is what Jesus has done. He HAS experienced death, AND returned. But notice that upon his return, he didn't excitedly report on his death experience. Rather his concern was clearly on other matters. Which means in the grand scheme of things, perhaps Death is not really that big a deal.
The other thing which makes me suspect death is probably not as fearsome as we tend to give it credit for is silly but quite erm... "rational".
You see, God knows that when He created us we would definitely have to experience physical death (except for Enoch, Elijah and the people who are living at the second coming).
So let's say we assign some measure of satisfaction to life, say we call it utils. The meaningfulness and joy of living on earth and after death would have positive utils. The sorrows, sufferings on earth (and after, depending) and the horror of experiencing death would have negative utils.
Then, it would only make sense to create life if the total utils of life on earth + life after death is still positive after deducting the negative utils of death and dying and suffering while on earth, right? Otherwise, isn't it just sadistic to create life?
Ok, i admit this is foolishness.
Obviously His ways are higher, and this issue is something i can never fully understand, at least when i'm still here.
But it helps my mind to deal with the concept of death- so certain, so definite, so commonplace, yet so unimaginable, unknowable.
So the conclusion of the matter is,
Jesus has been there done that, God is loving, God is in control.
Action point is, people need God. Pray and tell.
And, in light of this, it's not THAT big a deal whether the next generation is well-disciplined or hardy or strawberry-like.
People need God.
That's the real need.
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