White Heart is moving towards its climax.  I hope you are enjoying your reading.  Thischapter is a challenge, because the main theme of this section is Death.  And I want to talk about death without being flowery, or morbid.  Death is one of the only sure things in life. We don’t like to discuss it, but we are surrounded by it.

I came face to face with death for the first time when I was seven.  The neighbor’s Great Dane picked up my cute black kitten (Frosty was her name) and shook her until her neck broke.When I was seventeen, I drove by the old oak tree on the Post Road, and saw its bark slashed. A classmate had driven into it the night before, drunk. He killed himself and three of my friends.When I was twenty-seven and working in a hospital, I watched my first (and only) autopsy.  The corpse was an acquaintance that had been very much alive the day before.  I discovered how the human body is just a shell for our soul.  Two days later, my mother called to tell me my father, age 59, had died of a heart attack that morning.  I never saw his body, but because of the autopsy I could imagine Daddy’s body as an empty shell, his spirit in Heaven.Death has appeared to me in other ways:  I have witnessed the death of innocence when my granddaughter saw her father attack her grandfather. I held the three-year-old in my arms while the police took the father away.I experienced the death of my marriage -- a lingering, painful and confusing type of death which occurred over a decade.I am witnessing the slow progressive death of my mother’s personality, as she slides in and out of dementia  at the age of 96.  We are preparing for her transition into Heaven.Death is the Turning Point in our existence.When our body dies, our soul enters eternity.As I said in the blog for Chapter 21, “Annie’s Struggle”, it’s our choice as to whether we enter eternity with God, or without God.  I am not going to dwell on what I think an eternal existence would be like in a zone that was VOID of God – no light, no love, no beauty, no song.And I am not going to preach about the need to invite Christ into your heart. But know this: I don’t want your soul to perish because you haven’t responded to God’s call.Instead, I want to reflect on what the Bible teaches about Death.-- God placed the sentence of Death upon Adam and Eve so that they would not live for eternity as cursed people. God blocked their access to the Tree of Life, and kicked them out of the Garden of Eden. (Gen. 3:22 – 24).-- Death is the consequence of our sin.  Our sin takes the form of rebellion against God, or indifference to God. “For the wages of sin is Death.” (Rom. 6:23).-- Our primary enemy is Death, and we need Christ’s blood to destroy it. (1 Cor. 15:26).--  Christ has given us victory over death, a plan God had from the beginning of time.  Death has been swallowed up by this victory.  The sting of Death is gone. (1 Cor. 15:55)If you fear death, or if you are grieving the death of a loved one, meditate on some of the powerful chapters in the Scriptures: The dead will be raised incorruptible (I Cor. 15).   Dying is necessary to produce fruit (John 12:24).  Death cannot separate us from the love of God (Romans 8).

Up Next: Friday's video blog on Chapter 30!

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