Everything I've written about so far has been largely drawn from a view of the world as I see it and experience it, but here I must draw on hope as well.
For most of creation, death is the end of a life and the returning of the plant or animal to the ground or to be consumed as food for another creature to live. On a physical level, this is the end that will come to each of us. But we are not just animal. As I've talked about previously, we are children of God as well as of Man. The physical being will die for sure, but what of our 'spirit' - the real you and me - the part of us which is born from God.
Well (and this is where hope comes in), if I was God, this is what I would do:
Having created a world like the earth, lived on it and had children on it, I would learn from my experience and set about making more planets at least as marvellous. I've done it once; I can do it again and again. After all, I have the whole infinity of space to do it in; there's no end to how many 'earths' I can make. The only difference now is that I have children, so I want to give them somewhere where they can live in joy, forever - somewhere where the beings they will inhabit can live forever and are forever young; where death and disease are no longer necessary; where life constantly revitalises itself rather than reproducing itself. I would give them as much room as they wanted, with relationships between them being as close or as distant as each required. Having lived on earth myself, I would know what to leave in and what to leave out, to make sure that this time everything is just right for all my children.
So let's live life to the full, and work to ensure that our brothers and sisters can do the same. Let us respect life, but have no fear of death. Death is not the end of us, but the start of a whole new chapter. Freed from the constraints and problems which beset us here, we can look forward to a new, glorious life, and life in abundance.
Amen?