A Nice Depressing Poem for All Ya'll

From time to time I like to share my love of poetry with you.  This one came through on a daily poem email I get from www.poemhunter.com.  I trust that you will enjoy it.

Rain

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

Edward Thomas

The Death of a Christian

I have had many conversations with Christians about death and find that many are afraid of death.  This has always disturbed me, because from Scripture we know that death should not be a fear but rather a joy (1 Cor 9, 1 Thess 4:13-18).  Here is an excerpt from the book "The True Bounds of Christian Freedom" by Samuel Bolton.  If you have ever struggled with fear of death, I would encourage you to read the following.

The believer is freed from death as a curse.  The nature of death is taken away, and therefore the name is changed.  It is but called a sleep, and a sleep in Christ, and a gathering to our fathers, a change, a departing.  Death is the godly man's wish, the wicked man's fear...

There is another aspect to a believer's freedom from death - he will not die until the best time.  Indeed, none shall die until God's time.  What David said to his enemies, so may any man say: 'My times are in thy hand' (Ps 31.15).  But this is not always the best time: you may die with Belshazzar, carousing; with Ananias and Sapphira, lying; with the nobleman, unbelieving; with Julian, blaspheming.   But this is the privilege of saints, that they shall not die until the best time; not until when, if they were but rightly informed, they would desire to die.

Men cut down weeds at any time, but their corn they will not cut down till the best time.  'You are God's husbandry', says the apostle; you are His wheat, and when you are ripe, when you have done your work, then, and not till then, shall you be gathered into your Master's garner.

(added emphasis my own)

I would encourage you to specifically focus on the last line of the second paragraph.  At the moment of your death, if you were rightly informed at that moment as to the nature of things, you would actually DESIRE to die.  Why?  Because you would realize that for you to go on living would not bring God glory but would rather detract from who He is.  Do you understand this?  God is eternally and magnificently wise, and so He has planned just the right moment in time for your death, and your death will bring Him glory.  So, for you to not desire to die, for you to wish that you would not die, for you to fear death, is actually for you to not desire the glory of God.

May God be glorified both in our lives and in our deaths.  May we be assured that when we die it is the perfect time for our death.  May we even, when that moment comes, desire the death that is upon it, realizing that it has been planned before the foundation of the world for the greater glory of our Creator, Lord, and Savior.

To God be the glory forever, Amen.