Yesterday I was in the car for awhile driving to go help my Grandpa. His health has been failing and he is nearing the end of his time on this earth. It’s a hard thing to say that. It almost feels like you have given up hope or something. But what else can you say? Death comes for us all no matter how hard you try to ignore it. I was reminded of a line out of The Scorpion King…………….yes the scorpion king………… I know it’s some pretty cheesy acting, but I still like it. In it the Rock and his brother are about to take off for a mission that is sure suicide, and they clasp each others fourteen inch forearms and say. “live free…… die well”………… Pretty much any guy who has watched that automatically feels like more of a man after seeing it. There seems to be something honorable about someone who has reconciled death in their mind. They have realized that it’s something they can’t control and choose not to be afraid of it. In some ways they can live more free, when they aren’t afraid of death. I think this is true, but there has been modeled for us a freedom that is astounding. It’s not a freedom that reconciles death, but chooses it.
With his life and death, Jesus set in motion an extreme shift in the way things work. Not a life that results in death, but a death that results in life. In Matthew 10:39 Jesus makes a simple, but mind boggling statement. “he who find’s his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it”. I fully believe there is a freedom and life that we are called and invited to walk in that is fully the essence of heaven, on earth. But it can only come when we have been buried with Christ.
God give me the courage to choose death.
Die well…………. Live free
