There's the sting.

Oh, death where is thy sting?

My mind has been a bit preoccupied with death lately. Well, not exactly death, but the after affects of it. I blame my new morbid fasination on my dodging death for the second time this year. Also, this past weekend, a promient figure in my home church passed away. Even a sitcom I watched while recovering in the hospital had a main character facing death. Death seems to be everywhere right now.

We as Christians comfort ourselves with the knowlege that if the deceased "knew Jesus" they are in heaven. Cliches like "they're in a better place" or "he's resting now" or "she wouldn't want you to be sad" are almost always muttered at funerals. But does it ever really help? How do we as finite humans cope with and grope to understand something so...final as death?

The thing that gets me most about death is it's finality. There is no chance that I will see them again. No hope that we'll talk about the weather or how their holidays were. It's all gone. Death is completely unescapable.

People tell me not to dwell on such things, and I suppose they're right. But not dwelling on it doesn't seem right to me. I want to know, to understand. I just want to get it.

Humanity. There's the sting.