Peace admist terror

I'm sad about what's going on in Iran. It's heartbreaking. I made the mistake of watching the vidoe of the Iranian woman being shot by the police. It was a gruesome video and I truly couldn't get the image out of my head all day. You hear about these things happening all the time...and they do happen every day. But then you see someone die up close and it makes it real. It hits you in a way it never did before. I know death happens every day. But what a scary transition....from this life to eternity. And what a scary thing...to not know where you're going. I know when I pass I'll be with my Savior, and yet I'll admit, there's a part of me that's terrified about the reality of death. Terrified about the pain. Terrified about how. Terrified of leaving this physical world- the only world I've ever really known. My faith is in Jesus Christ and I believe with all my heart in that true reality, and yet passing from a physical realm to a spiritual realm? Wow.... Leaving the known and entering the "unknown?" My spirit lives for the knowledge of that"unknown"...my spirit is joyful to die one day to go be with the One who gave it life. But my body knows nothing of that reality. My body knows this world, this reality, these feelings, this knowledge of good and evil.... It knows nothing else. And to separate the two by death? What will it be like???

All throughout the day thoughts like these were going through my head. Then on the drive to CUB Foods I turned on 95.3. On this station a man was being interviewed- a man who lost his wife and four children when he lost control of their van during a storm and descended into the flooded river below. He talked of the pain...and of God strengthening his faith through his near death and the death of his entire family. But when he began sharing about his close experience with death, tears filled my eyes. And the Holy Spirit comforted my heart. Because he talked of the fear he experienced while being tossed like a rag doll through the current, he talked of the pain of gasping for air and only getting water, and he shared the feeling....the feeling of knowing his family was probably dead and of knowing death was at his doorstep. But his testimony didn't end there... because he talked about the Holy Spirit. And of how God was with him....of the deep peace that unexplainably swept over him admist the terror of what he was facing. God was right there. He was facing death... but God there.

And God gave me peace. A reassurence that despite my fear of death itself, He will be with me through it. He never leaves me. And it will be no different when I face death.