Death frustrates hopes, dreams, loves, friendships, happiness. We are not going to see anymore some known smiles, voices, ways of being, ways of living, and some expressions because those who possessed them are gone.
Only memories, frustration, and the feeling that we lost something are left. Death frustrates, because who really wants to die? (There are some disillusioned of living who would not like to be born). I understand that we were born to live.
Only memories, frustration, and the feeling that we lost something are left. Death frustrates, because who really wants to die? (There are some disillusioned of living who would not like to be born). I understand that we were born to live.
This feeling of living, of wanting to live was plainly expressed within us when we were children. Children do not know what death is. If we stop and look at children’s simplicity, we are going to notice that for them life is eternal. When they grow up they come across with the reality that death exists, something that frustrates, hurts, causes pain; then there is the feeling that life ends.
Why this feeling of frustration? Because God created us for living, for expansion, for a continuous blooming, for knowing, enterprising, doing. In God’s creation, we do not find another living being that entrepreneurs as we, who thinks about the past, lives the present and plans the future.
We are the only beings to record history and pass it on from generation to generation, to pile up knowledge and with it solve problems. If human beings died or not when yet they were in the paradise, it doesn’t matter (this discussion would be very long with many saying yes, and many saying no). What matters is that in the paradise the human beings used to live next to God and didn’t know what contradiction to God was.
Thus, living or dying did not matter, because we would be always living in him or not, dying would be as to be absorbed by Him. Death causes frustration because we are totally conscious that we broke off relations with God and consequently our years of living shortened.
In a distant past, according to the Bible, we used to live nine hundred, eight hundred, seven hundred years, but this was shortening that today to be eighty years old is a great victory.
But if we wait in Him, who is the life, to have the answer for our questions about why we don’t stay here forever along with our beloved ones and the things we love, we will understand that dying is not the end, it is much more the beginning.
Jesus came from eternity to give us hope, to tell us that there is continuity and to show us the way to get it. He himself is the way. Jesus said: I am the way, the truth and the life [...] (John 14:16); I am the light of the world, who follows me is not in darkness, but will have the light of life (John 8:12).
In a distant past, according to the Bible, we used to live nine hundred, eight hundred, seven hundred years, but this was shortening that today to be eighty years old is a great victory.
But if we wait in Him, who is the life, to have the answer for our questions about why we don’t stay here forever along with our beloved ones and the things we love, we will understand that dying is not the end, it is much more the beginning.
Jesus came from eternity to give us hope, to tell us that there is continuity and to show us the way to get it. He himself is the way. Jesus said: I am the way, the truth and the life [...] (John 14:16); I am the light of the world, who follows me is not in darkness, but will have the light of life (John 8:12).
If there were a time that we didn’t know the right direction and lived in darkness, without seeing ahead, now with Him, we see enough to know where we are going to, to be sure that our life doesn’t end here. Jesus is the comfort for the bad feeling of losing someone.
In Him our soul is linked to what is eternal, in Him we know what victory over ourselves and over our doubts is. In Him hope gets wings and we imagine how is to be there in heaven, how those we lost here are living there. In Him we anticipate the future in constant prayer.
Thus, if we see death through the perspective how Jesus taught us, death’s frustration power gives way to the power of hope, because it will be through death that we will see Him face to face, that we will be reunited with those beloved ones who have already gone, that we will leave behind all weakness of this our body and will clothe ourselves with the best thing God has prepared for us, as Paul said: “of incorruptibility”.
In Him our soul is linked to what is eternal, in Him we know what victory over ourselves and over our doubts is. In Him hope gets wings and we imagine how is to be there in heaven, how those we lost here are living there. In Him we anticipate the future in constant prayer.
Thus, if we see death through the perspective how Jesus taught us, death’s frustration power gives way to the power of hope, because it will be through death that we will see Him face to face, that we will be reunited with those beloved ones who have already gone, that we will leave behind all weakness of this our body and will clothe ourselves with the best thing God has prepared for us, as Paul said: “of incorruptibility”.
No, death cannot stop us because we were created for living. As it is true that death will come one day, for some very soon, for others after many years, it is also true that what it will reveal will be very real, and death will mean just a fragment of time of the transition to life.
I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full (John 10:10), said Jesus. That’s it, life will prevail to those who believe in the life that is Jesus. Apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:5), He said.
José Martins
