On Death and Dying

On Death and Dying

by Steve Loggins

10/12/09

There are many ways to die, some harsh, some full of pain,

like lemmings to the sea we run, toward death from life mundane,

It need not be, for death has died, and life now reigns supreme

Through Christ the son, the only one, whose death to life redeems.

The pain of death is left to us who live the temporal dream.

Facing death in certainty with the courage some have shown,

living last moments with dignity, a testimony we all should own,

But some do not, for death is harsh, and full of pain, and loss

for those who do not know the Lord - or understand His cross

They trade their life for death and realize not the cost.

For in losing life we gain it, and gain it for all time,

Instead of eighty years or so, our life becomes divine,

and Eternity is ours to have, in a freedom of His grace,

to live life as it should be lived, death is now replaced

with love and joy and peace within, sin has been erased.

Death is not harsh, nor full of pain, save for those who stay,

who cannot know the joy of life as lived in an eternal day,

We mourn for us, for we are here, in time and space and dust,

Corruptible flesh in a corruptible place, a place of death and rust,

and certainty of this one fact, Death will one day come for us.

And when God’s child comes to the day when he must say goodbye

to all those left to live the dream in this world wherein we cry,

We do so with the faith of one who knows the Father and His Son,

and knowing this, we have this hope, and surety that we have won,

and not just us, but all we love who have trusted in what God has done.

Death has no sting or triumph over God-spawned new creation

The old is gone, the new is born, through death to life a realization

of what is True, and what should be, of what we have always craved

a life with God as the center of us, a life without a grave

and... a land called Heaven....the home for all He saved.

(this poem dedicated to Shirley Reid, my secretary,

who knows no longer the pain of living... only the joy of it!)