even so, it is well

o Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight,
the clouds be rolled back as a scroll,
the trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend,
even so it is well with my soul.

I have been thinking a lot about death lately. You know how you can see the same book shelf or stair case a thousand times and never really stop to look at it, until something adrupt draws all your attention to it at once? This is how the idea of death has been with me. We watched the Titanic yesterday and it struck me very potently that death is something that actually happens, not just a device that crops up in stories. Maybe I was just finally old enough to really process what was going on- how many people had to make a choice that day between living and dying.

Putting myself in that position, I try to imagine how difficult it would be to accept the terms of what that decision would mean if I decided to stay on the sinking ship. First there would have to be an acceptance of all the physical pain- the slow process of freezing or the agony of water filling your lungs until at last you loose conciousness. And then you would have to accept that your life was over... that you would never again see this or that person and never accomplish this or that goal. And then you would have to face what was going to happen after death, and suddenly things that are usually spoken of in abstract, behind-the-scenes kind of ways would become tangable issues to grappel with. Weather or not you believed in an afterlife would suddenly become very plain, regardless of how you thought you felt before.

This is the crux of the matter as I've been considering it lately. It's one thing to think of God as the God of life- someone who holds the winds of providence in His hands and twists and turns them together to create the intricate patterns and textures of existance in the realm of the tangable. It's also easy to stow away the idea of God as colateral for the time of death without ever really asking yourself if you trully believe He will be there when the time comes. It's another thing all together to see God as the God of death- the God who suddenly becomes real and fully and undisputably in control the minute life ends.

It's really hard to imagine actually being ready to face that God- not that He will be any different in person than He is now, but the idea of Him will be so much more real and powerful than we can imagine, I'm sure. I'm just imagining the sin, the doubt, the fear, the terrible confusion that could preceed that moment, and then bam- you have crossed that dark river and you find yourself before a perfect God. This puts a whole new spin on the phrase "live like you are dying."

But more than anything, what strikes me about the idea of death is how wonderful it will be to have years of hope, trust, and waiting confirmed the minute your eyelids close in death only to open again on Him. As much as I believe and know that this is what will happen, there will still be something completely overwhealmingly wonderful about knowing it finally, once and for all, with no more room for doubting. The day when "faith will be made sight" has got to be the most rewarding, the most satisfying day of existance... more so then I ever really imagined it could be until now.

These thoughts make me realize: Life is not something to be thrown around recklessly, but neither is it something to be guarded in huddles or small corners. When the worst that you could meet is the best thing that ever happened to you, then really folks, what do we have to loose?