Someone recently told me they were afraid to die. I laughed it off. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because the thought of someone so young dying seemed so unlikely. I don’t know why. Death has no prejudice. It doesn’t play favorites. No one escapes its grasp. I do know this. In fact, death is something I have spent a fair measure of time thinking about as well. I just finished watching "The Fountain", a movie about the journey of a man coming to terms with the death of his wife. It was beautiful. Thomas, the main character, spends a large portion of the movie trying to discover a cure for his wife’s brain tumor. "Death is a disease", he exclaims at one point. "It’s like any other. And there’s a cure. And I will find it."
His wife, Izzy, on the other hand, seems to have very few qualms about leaving her life. In fact, many a time throughout the story she seems to be more alive than he is. I almost wonder if that was the whole point. During his race to find a cure, it crossed my mind that Thomas was letting his precious time to spend with her slip past, while he toiled away, trying to slow down the inevitable. All the while, his wife patiently waits for him to listen, as she tries to convince him, there is nothing to fear in death. "The road to awe", she calls it.
Eternity is hard to wrap our fragile minds around. Immortality. It may be hard to grasp, but we still try. Yet many of us fail to realize, like Thomas, that we are spending our entire lives chasing something we already have. We will live forever. Jesus said He came and died to give us eternal life. I think sometimes we get so wrapped up in this almost inconceivable concept of eternity that we fail to realize the key word here is life. We were created to be immortal. We were destined from our first breath to live eternally. Our sin brought physical death to humanity, but it did not change the reality that we are eternal beings.
So maybe we’ve got it all backwards. Is that so hard to imagine? Maybe it’s not eternity we should be chasing. Maybe we misunderstand our thirst for immortality. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe life is what we’re chasing. And maybe we aren’t actually living it the way we should. Maybe we’re chasing after the One who showed us how to live it. Or maybe we should be.
His wife, Izzy, on the other hand, seems to have very few qualms about leaving her life. In fact, many a time throughout the story she seems to be more alive than he is. I almost wonder if that was the whole point. During his race to find a cure, it crossed my mind that Thomas was letting his precious time to spend with her slip past, while he toiled away, trying to slow down the inevitable. All the while, his wife patiently waits for him to listen, as she tries to convince him, there is nothing to fear in death. "The road to awe", she calls it.
Eternity is hard to wrap our fragile minds around. Immortality. It may be hard to grasp, but we still try. Yet many of us fail to realize, like Thomas, that we are spending our entire lives chasing something we already have. We will live forever. Jesus said He came and died to give us eternal life. I think sometimes we get so wrapped up in this almost inconceivable concept of eternity that we fail to realize the key word here is life. We were created to be immortal. We were destined from our first breath to live eternally. Our sin brought physical death to humanity, but it did not change the reality that we are eternal beings.
So maybe we’ve got it all backwards. Is that so hard to imagine? Maybe it’s not eternity we should be chasing. Maybe we misunderstand our thirst for immortality. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe life is what we’re chasing. And maybe we aren’t actually living it the way we should. Maybe we’re chasing after the One who showed us how to live it. Or maybe we should be.
Posts
