Death is a thought which takes on many forms, often unrecognized. It may appear
as sadness, fear, anxiety or doubt; as anger, faithlessness and lack of trust;
concern for bodies, envy, and all forms in which the wish to be as you are not
may come to tempt you. All such thoughts are but reflections of the worshipping
of death as savior and as giver of release.
Embodiment of fear, the host of sin, god of the guilty and the lord of all
illusions and deceptions, does the thought of death seem mighty. For it seems to
hold all living things within its withered hand; all hopes and wishes in its
blighting grasp. All goals perceived but in its sightless eyes. The frail, the
helpless and the sick bow down before its image, thinking it alone is real,
inevitable, worthy of their trust. For it alone will surely come.
All things but death are seen to be unsure, too quickly lost however hard to
gain, uncertain in their outcome, apt to fail the hopes they once engendered,
and to leave the taste of dust and ashes in their wake in place of aspirations
and of dreams. But death is counted on. For it will come with certain footsteps
when the time has come for its arrival. It will never fail to take all life as
hostage to itself.
Would you bow down to idols such as this? Here is the strength and might of God
Himself perceived within an idol made of dust. Here is the opposite of God
proclaimed as lord of all creation, stronger than God's Will for life, the
endlessness of love and Heaven's perfect, changeless constancy. Here is the
Will of Father and of Son defeated finally, and laid to rest beneath the
headstone death has placed upon the body of the holy Son of God.
Unholy in defeat, he has become what death would have him be. His epitaph, which
death itself has written, gives no name to him, for he has passed to dust. It
says but this: "Here lies a witness God is dead." And this it writes again
and still again, while all the while its worshippers agree, and kneeling down
with foreheads to the ground, they whisper fearfully that it is so.
It is impossible to worship death in any form, and still select a few you would
not cherish, and would yet avoid while still believing in the rest. For death is
total. Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die. No compromise is
possible. For here again we see an obvious position which we must accept if we
be sane; what contradicts one thought entirely can not be true unless its
opposite is proven false.
The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane have
difficulty in believing it. For it implies that God was once alive and somehow
perished, killed, apparently, by those who did not want him to survive. Their
stronger will could triumph over His, and so eternal life gave way to death. And
with the Father died the Son as well.
Death's worshippers may be afraid. And yet can thoughts like these be fearful?
If they saw that it is only this which they believed, they would be instantly
released. And you will show them this today. There is no death, and we renounce
it now in every form, for their salvation and our own as well. God made not
death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion. This the stand we take
today. And it is given us to look past death and see the light beyond.
Our Father, bless our eyes today. We are Your messengers, and we would look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love Which shines in everything. We live and breathe in You alone. We are not separate from Your eternal life. There is no death, for death is not Your Will. And we abide where You have placed us, in the Life we share with You and with all living things, to be like You and part of You forever. We accept Your Thoughts as ours, and our will is One with Yours eternally. Amen.
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