Our questioning of death and our immense sense of loss in its presence if we are honest, strips us of all our pretenses and identifies for us what is real about life. It is not our bank account, the car we drive, where we live or the clothes we wear. It is who we are as a person, that’s what is real and that’s what matters when we die. It won’t matter that we have failed, or had a past that was dirty. For the person who truly knows what is real, is one who has turned to God the author of life for help to be the true person he/she was meant to be precisely because of their failures and a dirty past.
In Isaiah 25:8, God declared through the prophet, "He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it." The apostle Paul based on this Isaiah passage offers these comforting words regarding death and the final resurrection, "So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Corinthians 15:54-57 KJV).
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