Afraid to Die
Die Ready, Part I. The fear that runs your whole life from underneath.
My replies filled up this week with one subject. Death. Where the dead went, what the grave holds, who walked out. Strangers leaning in from every direction, asking questions nobody ever sat with them on.
That question came from a reader, not from me. Most of the hard ones do.
I wrote the geography of it over on Dead Hidden this week. The open graves, Abraham’s bosom, the strange furniture of the unseen world. Digging up buried things is that publication’s whole job. But the digging kept turning up a different question, and it has not left me alone since.
Are you ready?
Not “do you know where Abraham’s bosom is.” Ready.
I wrote my first Bible study in the cab of a garbage truck. Four in the morning, waiting on a route. I am telling you that so you know where this comes from. Not a seminary office. And the verse coming up is one nobody ever preached to me. It sat there in plain sight the whole time.
“Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” Hebrews 2:14-15
All their lifetime. Subject to bondage.
Not at the end. The whole time.
The fear of death is the landlord fear. Every other fear pays rent to it somehow. Fear of the doctor, fear of the lump, fear of the phone ringing at the wrong hour. A man skips his checkup for six years because he would rather not know. A woman lies there at two in the morning doing math on years. Both of them keep the schedule too full to sit still, because still is where the question lives.
I posted about three kings this week who lost their sleep. Not one of them was in danger that night. The danger was in the chest, not the room.
Most people never fight this fear. They manage it. Feed it, keep it quiet, keep the calendar full so it never gets the floor.
The Book does not say manage.
Destroy him that had the power of death. Deliver them. That is eviction language. Christ did not take flesh to help anybody cope with the landlord.
Tonight the fear gets named. Tomorrow morning, the word the Book uses for a believer’s body in a casket, and what to say standing next to one. Friday, how you can know you are ready, and I mean know, not hope. Saturday, the thief, and whether anybody can be too late. Sunday, what ready does to a regular Tuesday.
Die Ready is a paid series, tonight included. The fear getting named above the line, that part was yours to keep. The eviction is below it. The work takes my mornings, and paid readers are why my mornings happen at this desk.
The Eviction Notice
Below the line: how the fear actually leaves. The taunt Paul threw at an open grave, and where a man gets the nerve to talk to a grave like that. And the thing I do at two in the morning now when the old landlord knocks on a door he does not own anymore.
Bring your fear down there with you. It is about to lose its lease.
