What we fear the most in life is death among things we feel fearful.
Soseki Natsume is a famous novelist who wrote “I am a cat”. When he was forty-eight, he lost his daughter and wrote in his diary.
“Yesterday we had a wake, today we have a funeral and tomorrow we will place the ashes in a grave. It is busy. But, after doing all these things, I think what we are doing is meaningless. Unless death is not changed into life, everything is meaningless.”
He seems to have said this as a father, not as a notable writer. We can sympathize with him in his suffering. Death takes away all our hope from us. However, here is a book that gives us hope! It is a bible. It tells us there is Jesus, who changed death into life. He said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.”(John 11:25)
This word is not just a consolation. Jesus said this while the funeral of a young man named Lazarus who had become sick and passed away four days ago. And the Bible tells Jesus raised him from the dead.
If this event had been a fake one, attendees of the ceremony would have criticized him and the story would have been eliminated a long time ago. But it has been told as a fact till this day, not just a symbolic story, because it really took place in the past.
For forty years, I have attended the last moment of many people as a pastor. It makes a big difference whether he or she has hope for eternal life or not. May you come to church and know the thing that overcomes death so that you have peace in your life.
Senior Pastor Masao Nakanishi