How Will You Die?

Standing at the top of the new year, what better time then to consider the most timeless question of all. How will you die?  This blog will be posted in eight installments. This is the first.

If you are a saint, and the rapture of the saints does not occur in your life time, you will die, no doubt about it. Death is not a topic up for discussion. It is not assigned according to merit nor can it be reassigned or delegated to someone else on your behalf.

Though none of us starts out thinking about dying, or knowing when or how it’s going to happen, very few of us take much time to prepare for it. We are too busy living to think about our final days or years here on earth. Besides, it is such a morbid subject.

And yet, for as much as is NOT said about dying, it is always hanging out in the back of our mind. Why else would we be so intensely interested in ways to stay young?

You will have a funeral with flowers and a eulogy. You will be put in a box or in an urn and set on a mantel or sprinkled over some cold bit of earth or forgotten piece of ground, if you are one of the more cared for among us.

Or you could be left to die without help, found by the vultures who have encamped against your lifeless form, fallen on some street or wilderness place or battlefield or snuffed out by some holocaust, struck down, silent and left, without a tear or a song.

The only good news is that these are only possible endings to your BODY. The life you lived in it for that first tiny portion of your existence here will go on to be judged and relocated. The greater question is, then, where will we spend the rest of eternity that has no end.

The account of those things we did in our body, during our life spent here will determine that answer. Then everything will change. Those who have been rich and well off may find themselves poor and without comfort. Those who were downtrodden and lived in shame and reproach as second and third class world citizens may end up presiding over kingdoms and live in mansions.

Jesus Christ said “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; …I go and prepare a place for you.” (John 14:1-2).

Finally, we will have a place! A place to be safe and loved and wanted. “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” God is going to share His Kingdom with the poor and cast offs of this earth. “Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled”. He is giving food and substance and satisfaction to those who didn’t have a chance, who were not born well positioned for the race of life.

“Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh”. How many here have been so overtaken by the injustices and abuses committed against them that they couldn’t even hope, let alone laugh? And, “Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you, and revile you and cast out your name as evil, …Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven.”

Justice is coming! Truth rules! Righteousness prevails! But only those who live their lives loving the Justice and truth and righteousness, and in favor of Mercy will be given mercy.

Is your name written in the Lamb’s Book of Life? Do you have your reservations in the Kingdom of Heaven, or have you neglected to look into your eternal life options. The stakes are high. To be wrong, at this stage of your life would be and incalculable tragedy.

In the words of Jesus, “it would be better for (that man) if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in he depth of the sea.” (Matt. 18:6). It would have been better if we would never have been born than to have been born and to be cast into everlasting hell fire.

So, seriously, what is the point of being stubborn and self directed when, in all reality, we can not even create one blade of grass on our own. The loss would be unbearable and absolutely a needless, pointless waste!