Hide and Seek and Heaven

"Ready or not - here I come" - these are the words for the game "hide and seek." The hunter yells to warn the hunted that the hunter is on the prowl.

Death is no game. It comes to us all eventually whether we're ready or not! Death is the hunter that stalks us all.

I've been thinking about death this week. My friend died Tuesday. She is finally free of her pain. No more tumors will grow in her frail body. She has taken her last gasping breath and felt her last terrible pain. Just the night before as I stood at the end of her bed at hospice and asked if there was anything I could get her, she responded with her typical, "No, I'm good." I looked into her eyes and said, "You would say that no matter what, wouldn't you?" She responded, "I'm as good as I'm ever going to be." Then I knew that she finally knew she was looking death in the face very soon. Just a few hours later she slipped into eternity. They told me it was "unexpected" when I showed up the next morning.

There's a song: "Life is filled with guns and war ... I wish we'd all been ready." Death comes whether we're ready or not. Death eventually finds us all no matter how or where we hide.

Jesus told a prominent leader named Nicodemus in Jerusalem one dark night, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16) That's the way to be ready when death comes - JESUS! He's the ONLY path to heaven! He is the only sure hiding place in life and when death comes!

Only Jesus can make death a path to heaven! Only Jesus can make us ready for both death and heaven! Life is filled with guns and war and pain and more. Only Jesus fixes our hearts so we can leave our broken bodies behind and move on to a far better place beyond death - heaven.