Last year I said goodbye to a friend from my high school years. David, who struggled with physical challenges his entire life, was just 50 years old when kidney failure took him.
Why do some people die seemingly before their time? Why do parents have to bury their children? These are burning, universal questions—asked even by those who believe humans and the world evolved as a result of random chance. In times like these, every last one of us looks for an explanation. For, as created beings, we intuitively know there has to be some reason.
Thankfully, the Bible doesn’t leave us in the dark. The book of Genesis reveals that human beings once lived in a perfect world, with no death to face and fear as part of God’s original plan. All that God initially created was “very good” (Genesis 1:31), that is, until evil and sin entered the world—causing all of creation to enter a state of perpetual brokenness (Genesis 3:1-24). Ever since then, life in this world has been far from perfect. That’s why people, like my friend David, die.
Every person, however, longs for Eden. Even those who have never cracked open the Bible. As C. S. Lewis said in The Weight of Glory, in every person there is an “inconsolable longing” for a better world, free of sickness and death. For believers in Jesus, that world is coming. Through Him, God will one day fully restore the world to the way it was intended to be (Revelation 21:5).
Lewis went on to say, “At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door . . . but all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get in.”
NLT 365-day reading plan passage for today: Joshua 5:13-6:27
More:
Notice how Paul talks about the future liberation that awaits creation in Romans 8:19-21.
Next:
Where is your hope as you think about death? How are you encouraged when you think about the future restoration of all of God’s creation?
conmeo on March 3, 2012 at 12:03 am
Thank you Jeff and praise to God for men like you. Very inspirational to those of us who have lost loved ones “before their time” and us who are lost and alone.
cjaway1 on March 3, 2012 at 11:27 am
Thanks Jeff! Please also include Revelation 21:4 “and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes…”, not He will send an angel or someone else, but He, Himself. What a promise!!!
winn collier on March 5, 2012 at 11:48 am
I’m eager for the moment when all things are new and death has been once and for all – undone.
Jeff Olson on March 5, 2012 at 12:24 pm
Amen!