During the summer after my fifth grade year of school our phone rang surprisingly early on a Saturday morning. My mom answered it as I listened from the next room. I was intrigued by the negative turn in my mom’s voice and came to the kitchen to see what was up. My mom was visibly troubled though it was unclear as to what was wrong. When she got off the phone she had the terribly unpleasant task of explaining to me that one of my best friends had been killed in a car accident the night before.

This was a lot for a ten year old boy to process and for me it was the first time that I came face to face with the ugly monster of death. My natural gut reaction was to object. Why? This was not right! Adults on every side tried to comfort my friends and me with petty words of “it will be all right” and “this is all a part of God’s plan and we need to accept it,” but deep inside something convinced me that death must have a more sinister origin. Death was wrong.

According to the Bible, though God is sovereign over death, yet it was not a part of the original creation. We were not made for death. Death is unnatural; every death, every funeral, is a testimony to the fact that there is something terribly wrong with us and the world we live in. Death is a result of an abnormality. Death is the byproduct of sin. It is an enemy of God and, praise God, will one day be banished from His kingdom.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.”

“For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death.”

~ 1 Corinthians 15: 25-26