How to Live

How to live? – that is the question.  I have to ask you – have you ever seen death?  Our society is quarantined off from death for the most part.  Death is something that happens in the hospital or maybe in a hospice setting.  That’s ok, but take infant mortality.  In the US it is 5.7 deaths for every 1000 live birth.  Go back 500 years.  It was 30%.  That’s almost one out of every three children!  Of Martin Luther’s six children, one died with in a few months of birth, and his 13-yr-old daughter died in his arms.  I can’t imagine the anguish.  Part of the problem with COVID is that we aren’t used to seeing death.

How many of you have seen a resurrection?  I have not.  Those are really rare… for now.  For all the jokes about death and taxes since Easter, I have to ask you:  Which is more certain? That you will die or that you will live forever?  Because I live, you also will live.

Hear the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 – Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

I don’t know if you will die.  There is a chance Christ will come back and you will never taste death, not from a heart attack or COVID or cancer, but I can guarantee that because of the empty tomb you are forgiven and you will live forever.

Want to hear more – including how the Spirit shifts our attitude to line up with his?  Watch this Sunday’s message taken from John 14: What do you do when you’ve forgotten how to live.