Beyond D-word Denial
Theme of the Week: Easter: Still Scary Stuff
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse: Christ Jesus … broke the power of death and showed us the way to everlasting life through the Good News 2 Timothy 1:10.Bonus Reading:John 11:17-44
Human beings have tried with all possible ingenuity both to defy and to deny death. In our day, at least in the West, nobody exemplifies the widespread fear of death more dramatically than tragic comedian Woody Allen. He regards death and dissolution with terror. It has become an obsession with him. He calls death "absolutely stupefying."
The most fantastic of all Christian claims is that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. It strains our credulity to the limit. Only Christ has claimed to conquer it, that is, to defeat it in his own experience and to deprive it of its power over others. Consider one of Jesus great "I am" sayings: "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die like everyone else, will live again" (John 11:25-26).
These verses contain a double promise of Jesus to his followers. The believer who lives will never die, because Christ is his life, and death will seem to him only a trivial episode. The believer who dies, however, will live again, because Christ is his resurrection. Thus Christ is both the life of those who live, and the Resurrection of those who die. Christ transforms both life and death.
—John Stott in Through the Bible Through the Year
My Response: Do I block out thoughts of death, or lean on Christ's promise?
Thought to Apply: It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.—Woody Allen
Adapted from Through the Bible Through the Year (Baker, 2006) by permission.
Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity. 1 of 1
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Lord, let me glimpse the staggering nature of the Resurrection, and its transforming power.
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