The Fear Of Death

Here in the United States we're in the midst of a presidential election as I write. Last week the candidates of the two major parties met in a nationally televised debate. Reportedly over 60 million people watched as they matched wits and offered solutions to the major issues and problems we Americans face. We the voters must decide now which candidate and which political party has the wisdom to lead us into a safe and prosperous future. One of the Biblical proverbs puts it this way:

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion. ... The words of a man's mouth are deep waters; the fountain of wisdom is a bubbling brook. - Pro 18:2, 4 ESV

Jesus claimed to have wisdom, not only the wisdom to rescue his nation, but the kind of wisdom that would bless men of all nations. On the final day of the fall-time Feast of Booths he stood in the temple and proclaimed,

"If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. - Jhn 7:37-39 ESV

In the past couple years the farmers and ranchers of west Texas learned much about being thirsty. A long drought dried up the pastures. Many had to sell their cattle just to stay in business. They had no grass to feed them and could no longer afford to buy hay. We are all like that grass. Without water we quickly dry up and die. A few years, a few fleeting moments and we are cut off. We grow old and wither like cut flowers.

Yesterday I spoke with a friend after Sunday worship. We talked tentatively about getting together for a more extended conversation over breakfast. "I'm finding it more and more difficult to get up for those early breakfasts," he said. "I'd just as soon stay in bed until after nine and maybe roll out for a ten or ten thirty meal."

"Hey, brother," I replied, "you're getting old."

"Yes," he muttered with a frown on his face, "but at least I'm still getting. I'm not done yet."

This little exchange reminds me of the longing in the hearts of us all. Getting old means that we are getting closer to death. And the very thought troubles us. Getting old implies that our bodies are falling apart. Heart and lung diseases, arthritis and who knows what other problems move in upon us. Some begin to lose their mental capacities. Short term memory slips away. We can't even remember that our son or daughter came by for a visit yesterday. Like grass, we're drying up and dying.

And even if we're young, we run from the thought of old age. There's even a fancy word for the fear of death called thanatophobia. The irrational fear of dead things is called necrophobia. We run from death. We long for life. We'll spend anything and everything we have to cling to it. Just watch all the things put up at this time of the year for the season of Halloween. Kids will soon come begging for candy dressed as skeletons, witches or vampires. Even they will try to mock death as it pursues us all from birth to old age.  

Are you in the same place in your soul? Does your heart thirst for life? Death is alien to our very being. Life is beautiful, but something deep and dreadful is wrong. It isn't supposed to be that way. And we know it, even though we struggle to put it into words. Solomon put it this way, 

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. - Eccl. 3:11 NIV

Jesus spoke to that thirst. It is, in fact, a thirst for God. We long to be united with Him. He is the source of our life. In Him we live and move and have our being. Jesus came that we might again have that life within us, that life that is like a stream of water, constantly bubbling up, filling us with our Creator's presence, power and peace. Once Jesus spoke of that water to a woman of Samaria who came to draw water from her village's common well. He said,

"Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." - Jhn 4:13-14 ESV

Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit, the source of true life, life that never ends because it comes from the one source of all life. I wrote about the Holy Spirit and Baptism in a series of blogs in June of this year. But there is much more to be said about the work of the Holy Spirit, especially as we consider Jesus' promise to the believer,

Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" - Jhn 7:38 ESV

More on this next time as we take another look at the abundant life of the Holy Spirit.