What Will Happen When I Die?

Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust.  Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.  These are the words I speak on Ash Wednesday, as I place ashes on the foreheads of those who come forward for the imposition of ashes.  The first phrase is also spoken at the graveside, as a person’s body is commited to the ground. 

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.  I have said those words fairly frequently lately at the gravesides of relatively young men – 3 in six months.  These men died much sooner than many would have thought that they should have died.  Their lives have been cut short, their families are grieving, and they will be missed.  Ashes to ashes and dust to dust – words that remind us of our mortality and the fragility of life. 

Ashes to Ashes and dust to dust.  Do our lives end in dust?  Are these men reduced to just a pile of ashes?  What happens now to these men?  And by implication, this question makes us also wonder, what happens to us when we die?

What happens to us when we die?  As a person of faith, I believe that when I die I will see God.  As Jesus says, “³⁹And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. ⁴⁰For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”   John 6:39-40  My faith tells me that when I die, both I and all of God’s other children, will be with God.  There is nothing, not even death itself, that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  When I die, I will be with God.

Being with God sounds great on the face of it, but what will heaven and the afterlife really be like?  As a child, I used to worry about heaven.  I imagined that heaven was this place that you went and just sat around thinking about God, singing, and going to church all day.  As a youth, that seemed as appealing as a long visit to the dentist’s office.  As a result, I was actually a bit afraid of heaven.  I was sure that I was going to be bored out of my mind.  I like singing, but that sounded like a bit too much singing, especially when it was going to last for all eternity!  Even the idea of eternity itself sounded a bit daunting, as eternity is soooo long – what could I possibly do for all that time without it getting incredibly dull? 

Today, I view heaven a bit differently.  The honest truth is that we do not know what heaven/the afterlife will be like – no one does.  Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel that he was “going to prepare a place for us.  In his father’s house, there are many rooms, and he was going to prepare them for us.”  Now, should we read that literally and believe that heaven will be a huge house with many rooms?  Probably not.  Jesus point was more that he was going to prepare a place for us to be with God, and he used the metaphor of a house, because that is what the disciples could most easily understand.  Further, he wanted the disciples to know that God also understood their individual needs – Jesus was preparing a specific place for them, taking into account their very specific needs.  The place that Jesus was preparing was for them.

Heaven is not a place to fear or about which we should worry.  Heaven is a place where God and his people will reside together, where “God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away” (Revelation 21:3-4).  On this side of death, there can be so much pain, loss, fear, and suffering.  When we die, we leave all of these things behind us.  Even though we may not know specifically what heaven is like, we can know that we will not need to fear the concerns that we have had in this world.

 Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life, the one believes in me will never die.”  This is my reason for hope.  Because Jesus rose from the dead, at the end, I will rise from the dead as well.  I no longer fear death.  While I may not know exactly what eternal life will be like, I know that at the minimum I will be with God.  If I am with God, it will most certainly be great! 

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.  I will be leading a memorial service at the end of this week.  For me, this is not a cause for great sorrow and fear.  There will certainly be sadness, because the man who died will certainly be missed by those who knew him – including loving parents, a caring sister, and two promising sons.  At the same time, his family knows that while the man’s earthly life is over, his next experience will be to see God and live in God’s presence.  While his earthly existence is over, he will spend eternity with God – and it won’t be just sitting around and singing, but it will be a time of eternal joy in God’s loving embrace.  Ashes to ashes and dust to dust – because of Jesus, this child of God will join all the others who have gone before in living for a joy-filled eternity in God’s joyous presence.