Musings on Death

While I was working on the sermon posted below, (not necessarily in relation to it though) I was thinking about a comparison between the experience of dying to the experience of being born. In the process of dying, people often endure great hardship and pain, perhaps even leading to confusion or uncertainty about what is happening to them or why. If we could see into the mind of an infant going through birth, I'd imagine we'd find their thoughts and experience to be quite similar. Both, are passing through narrow straits (figuratively and in reality). Yet for the Christian, passing through the narrow straits of death is the entrance to the broad and expansive freedom and bliss of heaven, in the presence of our Triune God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. The new joys of heaven will make the confusion of suffering seem like a distant memory, as must also be true of the birth of an infant, who passes from the narrow confines of the womb to a great and open new world. Yet unlike that birth of the infant, the heaven that a believer enters into after death is not a corrupt and sinful world. I just thought that this parallel might present some comfort as sometimes in the smallness of our perception, the suffering we endure in death does not show that God is not in control or that He is mistreating us, but rather death is without its sting because Christ has forgiven our sins by His death on the cross, and baptized into His resurrection, we rise too.

Those are just some rough musings, but perhaps someone else can explore the parallel a little more.