Fear of Dying

We were reading the story of the Trapp Family Singers, the group on which the Sound of Music is (somewhat loosely) based.  I read to our children most evenings from a variety of books and for some reason had chosen this book by Maria von Trapp.  Much of the book is amusing, but close to the end we came to a long chapter that dealt in detail with the death of Georg von Trapp from lung cancer.

Most of our children were quiet after I finished reading the chapter, but Elliot was in tears.  "What's wrong?"  I asked him.

"I'm afraid," he said.  "Of getting lung cancer!"

"Well, it's a good thing you gave up smoking," I told him, hoping to assuage some of his fear with humor. 

This seemed ineffective for he began to wail even louder.  "Why is Elliot crying?"  Victoria asked.

"He's afraid of dying," I said.

"Oh," Victoria said.

"Are you afraid of dying?"  I asked.

"No," Victoria said. "Because I'm never going to die."

This amusing interchange over, I rolled up my sleeves and tried to calm my son's fears and eventually he ceased crying and moved on to fighting with one of his siblings.

This conversation stuck with me though and in particular, the contrast between these two children.  One of them thought about death a lot and had a morose fear of it, while the other blithely assumed that while it might happen to other people, it would never happen to her.

To me, this was this illustrates the way in which so many deal with concept of death.  Many are scared by it, while others simply do not think about it until forced to by accident or disease.

Neither of these approaches feels like a good option to me.  It is so much better to place our futures in the hands of the One who conquered death and can give us victory over it as well.  Only then can we have inner peace in a world full of epidemics like Ebola and Coronavirus and even cancer, for Jesus will give us victory, even in the face of death's darkness.