Encouragement

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The process of growing old and dying is inevitable, but how one faces it is a choice. Scripture has addressed the subject, as well as poets and essayists. Judging from advertisements, many of us fight against it tooth and toenail. For some reason we seem convinced that young is better, at least in our society, and we fight desperately to keep youthfulness. As for death, sometimes it seems we try to ignore it hoping it will go away. Below is a poetic commentary on the subject by American poet Dylan Thomas:

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

But we know, as followers of Christ, that there is no "dying of the light" to bemoan and rage against. In fact, the Light grows brighter and brighter here and hereafter for those who are following Him. Believers "sleep" rather than die. 1 Thess. 4:14. Jesus bore the full horror of death. For those who are in Him, death has been transformed so that it is no more than sleep. His resurrection effectively removed the permanence of death.

"O death, where is your sting? O grave where is your victory? But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through the Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Cor 15:55, 57 The New Testament shouts the triumph of Christ over death and the grave.

Paul confidently declared, "I have fought a good fight; I have finished the course; I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me at that day, and not to me only but to all those who love his appearing." 2 Tim. 4:7, 8

And the Lord says that even to our old age and gray hair, He will carry us. He has made us and He will deliver us. Isaiah 46:4 Abraham faithfully obeyed God because "he looked for a city which has foundation, whose builder and maker is God." Heb. 11:10

As a balance, the last seventeen lines of Thanatopsis (Greek for "death"), written by American poet William Cullen Bryant:

"So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."

Why would old age and death make Christians uneasy and frightened? The poet Robert Browning said,
"Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be
The last for which the first was made."

He had it right.

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