August 23, 2026

We don’t know how it’s going to happen or what is going to be the cause but we often talk about how we want to go. Most often you hear, “I want to go to sleep and not wake up” or “I want to die doing something I love.” I have never heard anyone say they wanted to be eaten by a crocodile or burned at the stake. 

We are essentially saying I don’t want it to hurt and I don’t want it to be drawn out. Today I want to think about the moment after. When our souls have left our bodies and we have entered what we generally today call the afterlife. Let me say we don’t know much about this because we don’t have access. I know there are these 30 minutes in heaven books or variations on it; they may be nice fairy tales but the fact is, we don’t know from direct experience. It should also be said here that God has not revealed every detail and so there will be some questions we just can’t answer but he has given us what we need to know so that we can “not mourn as others do, who have no hope.”

The very moment leading up to and at death may be different depending on circumstances I suspect a heart attack is different than a bullet wound which is different than drowning, or burning, or being attacked by a lion. 

What about the moment just after, perhaps we can gain some insights into that:

Eccl 12:7 says the body returns to dust but the soul returns to God who gave it

Luke 16:19-31 tells us that Lazarus was carried by angels to Abraham’s bosom while the rich man dies and is in torment. 

II Cor 5:8 Paul says he would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord

Luke 23:43 Jesus tells the criminal on the cross “today you will be with me in paradise”

Ex 3:6 God says “I Am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” using the present tense. Indicating that those individuals were living when Moses spoke to God hundreds of years after their physical deaths. 

These passages and others remind us that while our physical bodies are finite our souls are not and we can anticipate experiencing eternity in one way or another. We must then be sure that our physical lives here on earth are lived with an eye toward eternity. Knowing that we have placed our hope in the only one who has ever died and then returned to tell the tale. Who is then uniquely able to say “I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except by me” 

~ Kevin Cleary