I sat around with a Bible study group one Wednesday night when one of our two group leaders asked a very thoughtful question. “Do you think about heaven?” he inquired. During that conversation, we were reflecting on Sunday’s sermon, which discussed heaven, what we can expect, and what we hope to experience. This a pleasant question, but one geared towards pondering a darker and harder one, a question that many of us often avoid. “Do you think about dying?” he then added.
The answer for me was an unequivocal yes. Between typical and involuntary deep thinking, along with bouts of suicidal ideations, death is a mostly comfortable topic for me. Not for daily consideration, but often enough, I figure. And a topic that doesn’t make me uncomfortable when considering my own death, but when considering a life without the people I love. My friend, my parents. Such a reality seems less than ideal.
The other folks in the group felt the same, each of them twice my age, married, and with kids in my age demographic. Not wanting to live life without your loved ones was the entire group’s sentiment. Honestly, I think the sentiment is probably universal. But where the older folks surprised me was acknowledging that they don’t think much about death at all. Some were scared of the thought. Others were in good health and didn’t think much about it. Some thought about death, but only when someone else was severely sick or if somebody passed away and wasn’t saved.
They aren’t the only people I know with some sort of discomfort toward death. I witnessed this particular fear during the height of the COVID pandemic. These days I hear people exchange the word funeral for celebration of life because funeral evokes sad and dark connotations.
Why discuss death when we can discuss life, some people figure. Why watch a sad movie when life’s already hard enough? These are good questions with very important answers.
Have you spent any time considering your own mortality? Do you think about dying? If not, then there are certain benefits you’re depriving yourself of.
If we are to call ourselves Christians, then we should find comfort in death, knowing what Jesus conquered on the cross, reconciling us to God, and conquering what no one else could. We should think about death because of the God-centered perspective that death brings.
Here are four benefits of thinking about death:
1. Death Leads to Gratitude
“Give thanks in everything; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18)
Have you ever noticed the amount of positive things that get said at funerals? The nastiest, meanest, and most vile person among us could have one of the nicest funerals. When death comes about, we choose to focus on the deceased’s strengths, virtues, and good deeds, rather than everything they got wrong. We develop an appreciation for them that, far too often, is something we don’t hold when they are alive.
When we ourselves are approaching death’s door, suddenly, the things we wasted time worrying about become pointless. Only what’s most meaningful, our relationships, matter.
We certainly don’t have to wait for death to develop gratitude, but death sure does speed up the process.
2. Death Creates Forgiveness
“For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don’t forgive others, your Father will not forgive your offenses.” (Matthew 6:14-15)
Family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, we all make excuses from time to time over the grudges we choose to hold. Then, when our rival passes away, we let go of the animosity, acknowledging that the anger no longer serves us. We let go as if the conflict was never a big deal from the beginning. But why wait to reconcile or forgive? Why do we choose to lead lives of animus and separation from one another that God does not desire?
We can choose to forgive one another now, before death claims someone and ultimately ends with us feeling regret.
3. Death Prompts Action
“Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.” (Psalm 90:12)
Too often does fear lead us to inaction. We miss out on opportunities at work, in our relationships. We choose not to build hobbies. When we see death claim others, we are sometimes spurred on to act in ways that the deceased was not able. When death comes for us, we, too, realize all the things we could have done but avoided.
When you acknowledge that your time on this Earth is limited, excuses tend not to carry as much weight. But building such a mindset is difficult for many of us.
4. Death Builds Faith
“And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Romans 5:3-5)
Even some of the most hardened people who refuse to believe in God in life, will soften their hearts as they approach death. Something about the great unknown humbles them and they start to see what they vehemently denied before. There must be more to life, or at least, they hope.
Though, even for the believer, death has a way of building our faith too. We learn to trust God more and stop spending our time focused on the things that don’t matter.
Death can and will bring all of us closer to Him, and in more ways than one.
Conclusion
Ultimately, death helps us build a better perspective on life and a better perspective on God. We learn to put away superficial cares, childish grudges, and incessant worries. We replace those with meaningful relationships and stronger faith. We learn to value what’s most important so that we can live without any regrets.
Death is an unknown for us in that we, as the living, have yet to experience it. However, as believers, we can speak with some measure of confidence about the life that awaits us in Heaven. We can say with at least some confidence that Jesus conquered death. Without being able to do either, there’s no surprise when we are afraid to ponder dying.
But abiding in such fear, ironically, leads to a lackluster life. We should think about dying, and we should do so often. How else will we live a full life?
Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/ Oliver Rossi
Aaron D'Anthony Brown is a freelance writer, hip-hop dance teacher, and visual artist, living in Virginia. He currently contributes to Salem Web Network’s Crosswalk platform and supports various clients through the freelancing website Upwork. He's an outside-the-box thinker with a penchant for challenging the status quo.
Get in touch with him at aarondanthony.com and check out his debut short story anthology Honey Dreams on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.