I’ve heard some people say that if you’re sure of your salvation, it’s wrong to fear death. It is important to know that fear is a natural feeling, it appears whenever something threatens our present or future. Taking care of ourselves with our life can awaken this feeling.
Living the now
We recently lost a great Brazilian journalist, the famous Jô Soares. In one of the interviews he did a few years ago, he spoke the following sentence:
“I’m not afraid to die, I’m sorry”.
Life has so many possibilities, we are so used to thinking about tomorrow and planning until the year that hasn’t even started yet. We are made of “nows”, but these “nows” always lead to tomorrow, and imagining this cycle ending at some point can often despair us.
Created for “always”
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart”
Ecclesiastes 3:11
The human being was created by an eternal Being. We were created for eternity, she lives in our hearts. Accepting anything less than that is not in our setup. Looking at such a big world and thinking that we won’t have time on earth to see everything makes us forget about the promise of eternity in Him.
I personally don’t see this feeling of wanting to live here a little longer as something sinful, the main problem is when we are more afraid of losing our physical life and the pleasures that we can have in it than losing our eternal and spiritual life.
Spiritual life vs. physical life
Jesus said in Matthew 16:25 – “For whoever wants to save their life[f] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it”.
Jesus associates “losing one’s life” with not living for the pleasures of earthly life. As we lose finite life, in this sense, and as we live God’s will, we find spiritual and eternal life in Jesus.
God created the world with vast possibilities for us to have life, but life in abundance. This means that anything that is contrary to a life with God, which benefits us for eternity, is death.
If God, as said in the text of Ecclesiastes, planted eternity in our hearts, this means that everything we live on earth must also bear fruit for eternity. And if it doesn’t, it just becomes an earthly pleasure for ourselves, which leads to a death of spirit.
Unfortunately, we can choose to live our life here on earth for our pleasures, that is, to earn a living here on earth, from a human perspective. However, losing it spiritually. But it is far better to die physically than to lose our eternal, spiritual life. The apostle Paul even said that dying (physical) was gain, because he wanted to leave to be with Christ. At the same time, he also found satisfaction in living (physically) for Christ and being able to generate faith and joy in the hearts of more people. In other words, living here on earth also generates joy.
Children of resurrection
“Jesus said to her: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die. And whoever lives by believing in me will never die…”
John 11:25-26
Jesus is the resurrection. He was the clear proof that, when we are with God, death is not an end point, it is the beginning of eternity already placed in us.
Enjoy each day. Every step you take. Live intensely. Show people how it’s okay to have a feeling of homesickness when we think that one day the earthly moment will end, but at the same time show that if we live here focused on God, we understand that there will never really be an end and that the finish line is the Eternal.
