Our culture consumes death like candy bars-video games, violent television series and gory movies. Halloween is one of the biggest “holidays” celebrated in America.
We are desensitized to news stories of destruction and devastation because we’ve “seen” it all.
Yet we are a society that shuns mourning.
We can’t stand to hear the keening wail of mothers following the linen clad bodies of their fallen children.
We segregate funerals to special buildings that look like low-slung country clubs complete with ornate light fixtures, clean bathrooms and temperature controlled environments. In many places we no longer bury our dead next to a church where the living and the gone before mingle, waiting the glorious appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
All this so we can ignore the lesson of Solomon.
“It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, since that is the end of all mankind, and the living should take it to heart.”
Ecclesiastes 7:2 HCSB
I was only three but I remember my great-grandaddy laid out in the living room.
My parents didn’t hide me away in some corner and allow me to grow up pretending death didn’t exist. They didn’t shield me from visiting my ailing relatives or from standing by the gravesides of my ancestors.
I brought my children to funerals from an early age.
There’s no use pretending that people’s bodies don’t die. Sooner or later it catches up to you.
But while our bodies don’t last forever, our spirits do. We are eternal beings, you and me.
It’s not a question of IF we will live forever, but WHERE.
And that was Solomon’s point: decide while you still can who and what has your heart.
Because that choice determines where you spend eternity.
There is only one way to the Father’s House-through Jesus.
In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.
C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain
Do you know Jesus?
He KNOWS you. He LOVES you. And He died for YOU.
He rose to conquer death for you.
He has made a Way where there was no way.
No one gets out of here alive…choose this day whom you will serve.
It makes an eternal difference.
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of alland richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Romans 10:9-13 NIV
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