A Weeknight Meditation on Death and Its Defeat

"We'll pull through this together."

If we come out of this pandemic with only 220,000 dead, will we have "pulled through" together? What about the dead?

We look at the living and think that everything is fine. We think we're fine. But we're not. Even if we don't die, we will. It's inevitable. 

Death is the only sure thing.

When I hear the songs of the triumphant, I want to cry, because they are not remembering their deaths. Their coming, creeping, inevitable deaths.

There is no escape. Only delay. 

Why aren't people more frantic about death? Why aren't the streets filled with people filled with despair? Is it because everyone has come to terms with death? 

Every social program, medical advancement, and government policy that has prolonged life has done only that--prolonged.

IRAs and 401(k)s decide how large our deathbeds will be. They don't decide how or when we will die.

We are flesh and blood, and flesh and blood dies.

"Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself (Jesus) partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery." - Hebrews 2:14-16

"Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.'" - John 11:25

"But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone." - Hebrews 2:9

Jesus tasted death for us. And then he was raised from the dead.

By faith in him, that is, by receiving what he did, we become participants in his defeat of death. 

"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." - 1 Corinthians 15:55-57

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