Dear God, what is it like to die?

Hard choice! The desire to break camp here and be with Christ is powerful. Some days I can think of nothing better. But most days, because of what you are going through, I am sure that it’s better for me to stick it out here.   Philippians 1:23-24 (The Message)

An eight-year old boy with a troubled background wrote a letter to God, addressed it to heaven, put a stamp on it and mailed it. The message read, “Dear God, what is it like to die?...I don’t want to do it. Your friend, Michael.” Normally, letters like this are destroyed but a postal employee opened Michael’s letter. It deserved an answer. 

When Paul wrote his second letter to the Corinthians, he used the analogy of pitching a tent as you would do when you camp out – speaking from his own experience as a tentmaker. He said that our earthly tent wears out, beaten by wind and weather with torn seams that can no longer be repaired. Then he said we have one that is eternal, made by God himself. Here’s how he put it: “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands” (2 Corinthians 5:1). 

In his last week with the disciples, Jesus said He was going to prepare a place for His followers so that “you may be with me where I am.” This personalizes heaven and makes it real – not simply a nebulous “out-there-somewhere” sort of thing. Heaven is the place Jesus went to prepare for His children.

 At the end of C.S.Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, all the characters die in a train accident. Lewis concludes, saying, “But the things that began to happen after that were so beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the bend of all the stories, but for them it was only the beginning of the real story.”

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Hebrews 12:1-3