Hope

This week I'll attend the second funeral I've been to in two weeks, it would be three in two but for the fact another is on the same day. Whilst funerals are never enjoyable they are not without hope for those who believe in Jesus Christ as their saviour.

It is at the grave side that you are confronted with the big questions of life that we try so hard to insulate ourselves from in our everyday lives - what's the meaning of life and what happens when we die?

The Victorians big taboo was sex, they didn't talk about it and any evidence was hidden away. In our society we have gone to the other extreme and sex is on everything, you don't have to spend too long watching day time television or adverts or listening to the breakfast shows on the radio to realise that. Our taboo is death, the Victorians dealt with death much more matter of fact way than we do, but we hide it away and try to isolate people from thinking about it. Mention it in conversation and it suddenly goes very quiet. Lose someone close to you and people don't know what to say to you, in fact so often they choose to avoid you altogether.

I wonder if that's why people no longer think about the big question; 'What happens after we die?' I'm not sure my friends would appreciate me even asking the question, yet it is one that is pushed at us every day as we watch the news and hear of more deaths in Iraq or of the Virginia tech shooting, or another teenager killed in London.

Its a question that Jesus seems to address frequently in the gospels. With Nicodemus he talks about the need to be born again if you want eternal life - life after death, with the rich young ruler that is the issue under discussion, in Matthew 24 and 25 again it is life after death that is the subject.

When Paul writes to the Corinthians life after death features (chapter 15) and then to the Thessalonians (chapter 4:13) he writes "Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you grieve like the rest, who have no hope..."

If the New Testament answers that question about life after death then it is a question that man had and still has, and it is a question that we must pose of those around us.