Is Death the End?

My friend's mother is dying. She picked her up today and took her to the hospital to get a blood transfusion. She told me she is really weak, her skin is pale, and she is not functioning nearly as well as she has been the past few weeks. Her mother is dying and needs the fresh blood to keep her alive until spring. She asked God if He could keep her alive until then. My friend is panicky. Her job is really horrible and she is losing her mother. Our mothers are the source we entered life through. The connection is so deep. The loss: one of security, of life, of love. My friend will watch her mother waste away and soon take her final breath. Let's hope and pray God will sustain her until spring.

Nearly two years ago the most influential mentor I had passed away, unexpectedly to me. She was 41 and she left behind two beautiful little children ages 3 and 5. I didn't believe it. Sometimes I still find it hard to. She was a mentor to me and in some ways a mother-figure. I thought she was so wise, she really understood life and what was truly important. I believed she could do anything - nothing could break her. But she wasn't strong enough to beat death. She couldn't fight even a tragic one.

Until you experience it. Until you watch it unfold before your eyes. Until then, does the fear hit you. And afterwards, a long silence follows. I wondered why she loved me so much and why she got so attached to me. Now I realize, she had lost before. She had seen death. She was aware of how short our time together on earth is. She made the most of it.

And now I struggle to believe the claim or do I believe and understand it more now? Death is not the end. It does not have the final say. In Christ we live forever. Have I ever taken this seriously enough? Do we take this claim seriously today?

I'm not sure what my friend believed. I'm not sure who she believed Christ to be. I know that she believed life did not end after death. How did a communist professor from a socialist country come to believe this? I'm not sure, but she did. And now she knows if life continues and how it does, if it does.

The silence grows louder to me now and so does my own fear of death. The reality of how small we are even if we appear so big. We are finite and we are born to die. Jesus Christ said that there is another kingdom that awaits us and we can enter it, but only through a narrow gate. It is through Him that we enter Paradise and through Him alone. This is hard for people to swallow, but I'm not sure if that's for the right reasons. Many don't see that this is good news indeed. It's because we don't ask the right questions. If we have trouble with the claim, we have to ask, what do we believe awaits us after death? Is it really nothing? Is it the end? Then isn't our quest for meaning, progress, and transcendence quite futile? Or do we think just any kind of kingdom exists after death and we can't really know for sure? Well, is anyone else offering us one? One that we can know quite a bit about? Did anyone else prove it existed? Like by dying and reappearing? I'm afraid not.

Perhaps the grave is the end, or perhaps there is something beyond, but we can't know it. Or perhaps the unique claim of Christianity that the one true God sent his Son to point the way to the kingdom of life after death. In his death and resurrection He proved to us that death does not have the final say, and a new kingdom awaits us when we die. Our longings and hopes will someday have fulfillment in a new life. And our fear of death can be transcended by the hope and assurance that death is not the end.