unless I die

For as long as I can remember, I've been terrified of dying.  I can remember even as a young child saying to myself, "I'm going to die", cease to exist, be gone forever.

I had hoped that, when I met Jesus with His Promise of Eternal Life with Him, which I believed then and now, this fear might just go away.  Indeed, it subsided, but I still found myself occasionally gripped by the thought of no longer existing.  This seemed to me to be a fate worse than hell itself, or perhaps a version of hell: annihilation.

As I enter the very last section of my life, this terrible sting of death has been blunted by Jesus (Hos 13:14, 1 Cor 15:55-57).  My impending death has been swallowed up by His Victory over Death (Isaiah 25:8, 1 Cor 15:54).  I can still remember the fear, and I wonder what death will be like, but it has lost its power in the Superior Power of Jesus' Indestructible Life (Hebrews 7:16).

Jesus said Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit (John 12:24).  In its context, Jesus here invites us to lose, to die to the self-ruled life so that we can find and keep His Life in us, forever.  But He also is referring to His own very physical Death, and ours.  So, unless I die, my life will remain alone.  But when I die, my death itself will bear much fruit, the fruit of a life abandoned to the Loving Lordship of The One into Whom I die, and yet live.

Join me in praying that Jesus will break the power of him who holds the power of death - that is, the devil - and free those who all their lives [are] held in slavery by their fear of death (Heb. 2:14-15).  And may we also pray that we will receive grace to prepare for and enter into a holy death, which will indeed bear much fruit.