Hospice
2009-04-01 14:39:00
Sympathy gestures to loved ones
Answer: I have found that the absence of hope is often a sign of the presence of fear. And the presence of fear is often a sign of the absence of faith. One might conclude by those two statements that hope is the same as faith. But, that is not true. Faith is the combination of experience, knowledge and belief.
People who have experienced a certain type of event in the past are less fearful than those who have never had a similar experience. By experience, they have acquired a particular knowledge that helps them to prepare for what they know is likely to come. Similarly, those who have embraced a certain belief have also embraced the experience of others who share that belief and are less fearful because of the knowledge they now have. But the strongest of all are those who have knowledge that has come as a result of their own experience and the testing of their belief. For them, faith has become a certainty that eliminates fear and replaces it with joyful expectation.
Let me illustrate all of this using an event recorded in scripture.
A small group of women who had witnessed the crucifixion and burial of Jesus came to his tomb three days later to anoint his body. They did not know how they were going to be able to get in but hoped that someone would be there to roll away the stone. But, when they got there what they found was an empty tomb and an angel who told them to go and tell his disciples.
The Bible tells us that they went from there with fear and great joy. Fear and joy -- two great conflicting emotions were both acting on them at the same time. They had never experience anything like this before and they did not know what to expect next – thus the fear. But they had heard Jesus proclaim that he would rise from the dead, and had seen for themselves the empty tomb and had met the heavenly messenger who told them that Jesus was alive – thus their great joy.
Fear and joy. Every transition of life, contains both of these. The birth of a child, the baby’s first steps, going to school, first dates, graduation, marriage, new careers, retirement – these and many other events contain within them loss and gain, sadness and excitement, fear and joy. And it is the same with death. For those who have that foundation of faith, fear of the unknown (death) is overcome by the joyful expectation of eternal life.
