COVID-19 series, #18: Are you ready to die?

19 Pastoral Thoughts on COVID-19

“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain…My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Philippians 1:21,23).

My penultimate pastoral thought on COVID-19 is a question: “Are you ready to die?” This question is forced upon the popular mind as we hear of 100,000+ deaths around the world in about three months. The cold dark hand of death could easily pounce on us at any time.

Death equates us all. The rich and the poor die. The educated and the uneducated die. The young and the old die. Bembas and Nyanjas die. Christians and non-Christians die. If there is anything you can be 100% sure of it is that you will die—unless Jesus Christ returns first.

I am amazed how many professing Christians do not want to think about the possibility that they may die very soon. They cannot say with the apostle Paul, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain…My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”

Well, with COVID-19 wreaking havoc even in the most industrialised nations of the world, you should face the fact of your mortality. Are you ready to die? This can only be answered in the affirmative if you know that your sins are forgiven through Christ’s atoning death.

You can only say you are ready to die today if God’s saving grace enables you to live for his glory and not for your own self-indulgence. Your conscience cannot be bribed. Let COVID-19 cause you to make the kind of changes in your life that will make you ready to die today!

“We’ve no abiding city here:

This may distress the worldling’s mind,

But should not cost the saint a tear,

Who hopes a better rest to find,

We’ve no abiding city here

Then let us live as pilgrims do; 

Let not the world our rest appear; 

But let us haste from all below.”

—Thomas Kelly (1769–1855)