If I'm truly honest I'm scared of death. It's not that I lack faith or confidence in what I believe but rather that anything beyond my earthly existence just seems unpalatable to me. I can't comprehend the concept of living eternally, of living without suffering, the very idea of ultimate perfection seems strange to me.
I have just returned from two weeks of honeymoon. Our wedding was as perfect a day as you could wish for, followed by two weeks in the blissful weather of Southern Portugal with it's beautiful fresh fish and empty beaches. Then coming back to our new home together, unwrapping what seemed like endless gifts and cards. The feeling of euphoria is a little bit relentless at the moment.
Just as we were about to go out for a lovely Portuguese meal one evening, my wife was sick. So instead of enjoying beautiful fried octopus and clams I settled for a cheese omelette, a beer and the sky remote. I ended up watching a BBC documentary about undertakers (what a cheery honeymoon we had...). The show followed the deaths of different people from different cultures: a Muslim man, a Mormon man, a woman with terminal cancer who attended her own funeral party and a man who died alone with sixteen cats and nobody at his funeral. It was fascinating to see how different faiths interact with death, how grieving and the pulling together of community seems to transcend differences in belief or theology. Everyone cries, everyone feels the emptiness of death, everyone feels the shortness of life, everyone rallies round the relatives of the deceased. I ended the night with a tear rolling down my face. I realised how scared I was of dying, I held Ellie's hand and for the first time realised that one day we would die.
It is true that my faith in Jesus Christ gives me ultimate hope of something beyond, but this is by no means an easy way out. It is often portrayed that faith is merely a denial of the finality of death, an emotional crutch for the weak- I don't find it to be so. Just the concept of something beyond I find puzzling at best, petrifying at worst. This life we live is simple, it makes sense, it is enjoyable. The idea of something else, something unknown is difficult to imagine or comprehend. Perhaps my fear of death shows a little of my lack of faith, or lack of confidence in teachings of Christianity. Or maybe this fear is something that everyone feels deep down sometimes.
Life is precious, time ticks without us noticing, death is inevitable. My wedding and honeymoon gave me a feeling of invincibility, death seemed like a distant thing to me. The truth of the matter is that it is never far away, it will always come too soon. Life is both precarious and beautiful- if we cannot recognise this how can we ever live fully? How can we cherish every moment if we fail to recognise how precious each one is. Realising this gave me a new appreciation of the little things, it put my life on slow motion so that I might see the beauty of a taste, the intricacy of a blade of grass, the feeling of joy in my heart. How can we not live our lives with death in our minds?
Ultimately all I have is trust. I do not believe in God because I want to live after I die, but rather I believe because I think that it is true- Jesus Christ shapes how I live, how I act, how I behave, he changes the lives of countless people around me. I have faith in his teaching, I have faith in his death and I have faith in his resurrection. But ultimately when it comes to my own resurrection, all I have is trust. It is like walking off the edge of a cliff in the dark- it scares me stiff. But ultimately I can hear a familiar and trustworthy voice on the other end: "I will catch you".
I am scared, but I know that I can trust.
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