1 Cor. 15:55 says, “Where, O death, is your victory?” This was the apostle Paul showing that Christ’s death takes the sting out of death for the believer because of his victory over the grave.

I had a pretty early and hard experience with death in losing my mom at the age of 9. Death to me always felt like a period. If there was anything after it, that certainly didn’t bring any comfort. The relationship was over. The memories were over. The intimacy was done. Life had ceased. All that nonsense about “she’s in peace” or “she’s in a better place” was just filler garbage that people said to make themselves feel better. They didn’t know whether she was in a better place. Those same people under different circumstances couldn’t even clearly articulate what they believe or why. Now all of a sudden you’re supposed to take their words seriously when they assert some kind of ambiguous truth about the afterlife?? I don’t think so. I’m not saying that the words had bad intentions but they didn’t really offer any comfort either. Death was the period at the end of a sentence…that’s it.

Since I’ve become a Christian however, my perspective has completely changed. If you don’t believe in Jesus then I don’t expect this post to convince you so I understand if you feel like this is just more of the filler nonsense I was just describing. That being said, Jesus turned death into an ellipsis. When Christ enters the heart of a person, that person has passed from death to life. This is not some weird, ideological nonsense but rather it is concrete reality. I truly believe that death is just the beginning. The fear of death is a hard thing to overcome. It really cuts a line between believing in something and having faith in something. I could say that I believe aliens are out there but I’m not staking my life on it either. If I tell you, on the other hand, that I have faith in something or someone, that’s a different story. That means that I’m leaning on whatever truth it is that I’m asserting and would fall if that something turned out to be false. I have faith that death is not the end of the line.

I love what Pastor Craig Groeschel said: I’m not a body with a soul but rather a soul with a body. My body is not who I am but just a temporal tent that will soon be gone. I look forward to going to heaven in the same kind of concrete way that I look forward to Christmas this year. I’m thankful that Jesus opened up a way for people to go to heaven. I’m thankful that the period of death has become an ellipsis. As Christians I believe the world is not only watching the way that we live but also the way that we die. I think there has to be a conscious decision to not let death have the final word…to approach it as an ellipsis and not a period.