On one of those terrible COVID death rate days, I overheard our house help, quoting Exodus and comforting a colleague to pray hard that death bypasses them, just like it did one night among Israelite homes in Egypt.

In her world, believers would divinely be spared from funerals, leaving death exclusive to non-believers. Ah! Prosperity gospel folks would have applauded her. Luckily I didn’t.

I gently shared with her Jesus’ words to Lazarus’ mourners in John 11, showing Jesus as the resurrection and life, but I guess she wasn’t ready to receive them, at least not in that context. I sympathized, because neither are we often ready to hear about the morbid destiny resulting from the fall. 

Yet her impulse was right. I could understand. I mean, at that point, I already had a Zoom funeral invite in my phone notifications. 

But I wondered, had she actually pondered these words in John 11, “whoever believes in me shall live, even if he dies”? (John 11:25). Let alone, had she noticed in that passage Jesus’ delay having learnt a dear one had breathed his last?

Like many of us, my house help’s understanding of the root cause of death was limited to public health, and no more.

Yet sin and trespass are the ultimate cause of every death, viral or not. Paul, having urged for righteousness in the first four chapters of Romans, explains how you receive it and in Romans 5:12,-15, describes its source and alternative.

You can almost hear him sum it up like “Death in sin, not merely death, should unsettle us.” That’s before he argues how not even death can separate us from the love of God. Two chapters later. 

One of the strangest benefits of the undiluted Christian faith is the Spirit-wrought capacity to face death with sobriety, yet without apathy. Jesus wept for Lazarus before he stunned mourners with hope. Chances are, if your faith leaves no room for grappling with imminent death, you love the world too much, the very thing scripture severally warns us about. If God says to die is gain (Phil 1:21) and we insist it is loss, one of us is utterly wrong. 

Regarding time, Solomon too in Ecclesiastes, bemoaning a vain world under the sun, notes how man knows not his time (Eccl 9:12) yet the one greater than Solomon (Luke 11: 31) would later counsel the anxious by reminding them too, no one can add a mere 60 minutes to his life by worrying. (Matt 6: 27)

Now that we are all scampering for hope, it should help to say that recognizing God’s sovereignty amidst rampant death is more soul-renovating than our favorite cherry-picking of scriptures to wish away the inevitable. Namely.

Man knows not his time (Ecclesiastes 9:12)

In other words, don’t worry, you too will die and you still don’t know when.

As of this writing, news just filtered through my family of the passing of a beloved uncle. True, no one prefers to wake up that way. It therefore helps everybody, when we, the currently beloved, can confidently say with Paul,

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons^] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:38-39)

This may come off a hard reflection for many, but at least it is not harder than living as if you are immortal, only to be interrupted by your last breath.

(Meantime, let’s follow public health guidelines, pray for the sick, mourn with those who do, and keep this gritty hope in Jesus going, as we await our turn, eventually, whether by virus or not) 

I bet you to hear more “amens” publicly reflecting on such inevitable.