Hope beyond death

Woody Allen once quipped, ‘It’s not that I am afraid to die; I just don’t want to be around when it happens.’ This joke could not disguise his fear. In one interview he said, ‘The fundamental thing behind all motivation and all activity is the constant struggle against annihilation and death. It is absolutely stupefying in its terror, and it render’s anyone’s accomplishments meaningless.’

Compare that attitude with that of evangelist and preacher David Watson, who died of cancer in 1984. He wrote:

When I die, it is my firm conviction that I shall be more alive than ever, experiencing the full reality of all that God has prepared for us in Christ. Sometimes I have foretastes of that reality, when the sense of God’s presence is especially vivid. Although such moments are comparatively rare they whet my appetite for much more. The actual moment of dying is still surrounded in mystery, but as I keep my eyes on Jesus I am not afraid. Jesus has already been through death, and will be with us when we walk through it ourselves. In those great words of the Twenty-Third Psalm: 'Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me...'