What do you feel about the health controllers who want to legislate our food into being good for us? Those who want to ban salt in processed food, for example. They tell us how many thousands of lives will be saved if we all follow their directives. I’m all in favour of healthy eating and when I get my fish and chips I like to put the salt and vinegar on them myself! But the serious point is the fallacy that we can make ourselves immortal. The death rate is 100% – we shall all die and ignoring that truth doesn’t help live a full life.
We shall all die and how we face that truth affects how we live our lives now. Is death extinction, or a new and greater adventure in life? Our answer that question makes a great deal of difference to how we live every day. I dislike Henry Scott-Holland’s poem, “All is Well.” It begins “death is nothing at all,” but it is taken to mean, “bereavement is nothing at all,” which it certainly isn’t. Grief is devastating and trying to pretend that the death of someone we love doesn’t affect us is no way to find healing. But if there is infinitely more to life than surviving another day, then each day can be illuminated by the reality of eternal life. That is the hope and the joy that Jesus offers.
Chris Ivory
King’s Lynn Minster