How rarely do we consider the greatest questions in life. If you are anything like me it is often difficult to get past the most basic questions. Where are my keys? What am I going to eat for lunch? What is on the calendar for the kids today? While these questions are important, life is so much more than these menial daily necessities.
Yet it is the wisest among us who spend their lives contemplating great truths (though often wise men become great fools). A number of things can keep us from these questions. Perhaps it is time that prevents us, we are busy people. Perhaps it is laziness, many of us can do that. Or perhaps it is avoidance, not desiring the thoughts that may come with the questions. And yet, at some point we must ask the question: what happens when I die?
It was Moses who wrote in Psalm 90:12 “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” It is wisdom to number our days! In this Psalm Moses is lamenting the shortness of life and the speed of time. He is recalling the terror of God’s wrath and the wonder of His infinite being. Yet he also points to the steadfast love and favor of the LORD to His people! To number one’s days is to recognize the importance and value of every moment on this earth, so that our lives may be lived to the glory of God. A failure to do so is to waste your life in frivolous pursuits, and all that remains at death is a sure expectation of the wrath of God who “will by no means clear the guilty.”
In short, to ask the question of what happens when I die is to ask: how should I live? To whom do we answer? Is there another side and if so, then what will we be? It was put into the mouth of the Count of Monte Cristo that “According to the care we bestow upon it death is either a friend who rocks us gently as a nurse, or an enemy who violently drags the soul from the body.”
Death is either a horrific ordeal to be feared by all or it becomes the very passage to eternal life with a good and perfect God. One who has redeemed His own with the wonderful blood of Christ. So then, I must ask the question: Have you numbered your days? Have you considered that unnatural moment when we are separated from these sin sick bodies to await judgment?