Our Mortality

I performed a funeral service this week. I thought about eternity, and thought of the options about eternity. The following is an excerpt.

Our lives are filled with many important and meaningful things. We experience the love of close friends and family, we find meaning in productive work, we enjoy hobbies and recreation. All these things are meaningful but pale in comparison to the main issue of life, our preparation for eternity.

On Nightline a few years ago there was an interview with a lady dying of terminal cancer. She made the comment, “No one makes it out of here alive.” What a powerful thought--one that we do not like to face.

How do we handle this? How do we face our mortality without going crazy?

King David of Israel grapples with his mortality in the following passage from Psalm 90.

Ps 90:16, 10, 12-17

1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.
2 Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3 You turn men back to dust, saying, "Return to dust, O sons of men."
4 For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.
5 You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they are like the new grass of the morning
6 though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered.
10 The length of our days is seventy years or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
11 Who knows the power of your anger? For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.
12 Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
17 May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us yes, establish the work of our hands. (NIV)

I see only four main options related to after we die.

One is that we stop existing. There is nothing more. It is over. Our purpose or lack of purpose is finished. Now, with all the evidence of after death experiences, few, even in the scientific world, believe this.

Another option is that all of us will go to heaven. Let me say, if there is a God that option would be totally unfair. Adolph Hitler and Mother Therisa would have the same future. I don’t think so!

Another popular idea lately is reincarnation. We will be reincarnated in some other form based on the lives we have lived. There is no hope in this.

If we live a messed up life, we start all over at the bottom of the food chain. There’s a lot of hope in that! If we live a good life we have to face living through this broken world again, and again, and again until we get it right. Where is the hope in that.

The Bible presents another perspective to consider. We have one life to live here on the earth. How we live that life has an impact on our eternal state. At the end of that life we place our fate in the hands of a God who is loving, and merciful, but just.

We forever escape from sin and the broken sinful world which came as a result of the fall. The pain is over forever.

And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him. (NAS) Heb 9:27-28

C. S. Lewis said, “Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance the one thing it cannot be is moderately important.”

Christ has done everything. He has loved you from before you were born. He has died on the cross, and has literally taken the punishment you and I deserve and paid the penalty himself. He has given us a way to receive his forgiveness and his gift of eternal life.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

We can do nothing else but rest in his forgiveness and mercy. We can turn our futures and our lives over to Him, to direct us in a new life through Jesus.