Every long weekend joy and sadness are spoken of. Joy, because of being reunited with friends and family members; sadness because of the high number of accidents that kill, injure and mutilate people who were anxious to enjoy the good things in this life.
It is interesting to observe that in 75% of accidents with fatal victims, the driver was under the influence of alcohol. A preventive attitude can avoid turning one innocent holiday into a battle field, where hundreds of people say farewell to life.
At the same time in which we perceive through the practices of many populations the disregard for life, a cry echoes from the laboratories that study longevity: “Living longer and better, if possible, not dying.” Aubrey De Grey, geneticist at Cambridge University, is one of the greatest defenders of the thesis that it is possible for the human being to live more than one thousand years. For De Grey, “at some time in the future, with medicine becoming more forceful, we will be capable to treat aging with the same efficiency that we currently treat many diseases.”
While science races to find a vaccination against death, imprudence, genetics, or lack of prevention will continue to destroy the lives of people we love, and us as well. Can we do something to extend our own life a little longer? Of course: cultivate good humor, love of fellow human beings, worry less, choose healthy food, drinking clean water, refrain from consumption of alcoholic beverages, eliminate smoking, sleep earlier, practice physical exercise and place our life in the hands of God.
In any manner, when death comes to someone who you love dearly, remember that God has an excellent plan to heal your pain. This plan is better than placing a dead body in a tube and freezing it to minus 196 degrees to wait for the day when physicians resurrect it. The divine plan was revealed in the words of Jesus Christ: “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25).
Jesus Christ was resurrected on the third day after His death on the cross, and this has implications for our life. “And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power.” (1 Corinthians 6:14). The belief in the resurrection of the dead is essential because “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.” (1 Corinthians 15:19, NKJV).
Believing in the resurrection brings comfort. “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, [John 11:11], that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him, … and the dead in Christ shall rise first” (1 Thessalonians 4:13,14,16).
Living a little longer, as everything indicates, depends a lot upon us. However, what awaits us at the end of 10, 20, or 30 more years that we are able to add onto our calendar of life? The darkness of death? Woody Allen, an American filmmaker, reacted rudely when he was told that his films would immortalize him, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work… I want to achieve it through not dying.”
Do you also want to be immortal? Only Jesus Christ can offer a full life, without limits: “And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” (John 11:26). You only need to believe in Him as your Savior and accept him as the Lord of your life and of your hope. This attitude guarantees eternal life when Jesus returns and the certainty that “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain.” (Revelation 21:4).
Francisco Lemos
