“He lives eternal life to bring, and dies that death may die.” —“Crown Him with Many Crowns”
“For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures… So we preach and so you believed” —1 Corinthians 15:3, 11
Philosopher William James wrote, "Back of everything is the great specter of universal death, the all-encompassing blackness… We need a life not correlated with death, a kind of good that will not perish, a good in fact that flies beyond the Goods of nature… And so with most of us, a little irritable weakness will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians. —The Varieties of Religious Experience.
Or, as a whimsical friend of mine says, "Death makes you think about things."
Death is indeed "the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight,” underlying the fun and games with which we try to distract ourselves. Yet all efforts to stave off thoughts of death are futile. In all of us there is an awareness of our helplessness in the face of death, an awareness that effects every aspect of our being. We are never free from the knowledge that someday we too will die.
Only the good news of Jesus Christ and the eternal life he freely offers can set us free from fear of dying. "He Himself shared (flesh and blood) with us, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:15).
So then, though we may work to liberate our brothers and sisters from oppression and tyranny and provide opportunities for them to enjoy the "goods of nature," but must also seek, “a good that flies beyond the Goods of nature.” if we do not, at some point, proclaim the gospel we have received from God—“a good that will not perish"—we will have left our friends in bondage to fear and melancholy musing. They will, perhaps, be better off in this present world, but live without hope, in mortal fear of "universal death, the all-encompassing darkness."
So, Lord, I ask…
Make me a fellow worker with thee,
Nought else befits a God-born energy;
Of all that's lovely, only lives the high,
Lifting the rest that it shall never die. —George MacDonald
David Roper
6.5.21
