Be Ready

     Having had 3 funerals in one week, I’ve been thinking alot the past few days about death.  For many, it’s a morbid thought to be altogether denied or at the least constantly relegated to the mind’s “back-burner.”   However, it certainly does not need to be such.  Though every normal human being has a natural instinct to preserve his own life – at the same time – the prospect of death does not have to be feared by God’s child.

     Apostle Paul put it quite simply:  “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord!”  (II Cor. 5 : 8) 

     Sir Henry Havelock, when felled by an attack of malignant cholera and told that he could not survive, calmly and happily replied, “Why, I have prepared for this for 40 years!”

     The 3 aforementioned deaths have touched our church deeply.  All were church families and all were either premature or unexpected.  Nonetheless we do not grieve as those “who have no hope,” but rather we look for that day when “the dead in Christ will rise first,” and “God will bring with Him all those who ‘sleep in Jesus!'”  (I Thess. 4 : 13 – 16)

     I don’t have a death wish, but I must be honest…Heaven sounds mighty GOOD to ME!     I’m READY!    Amen!