Death can be a fearful thing to contemplate. In his book, Facing the Last Enemy: Death and the Christian, Guy Prentiss Waters says this:
“The time to prepare ourselves to meet these fears is not the day and hours before our death. It is right now. Scripture calls us to prepare ourselves for death while we live. We may think of three ways to do this. Each has to do with our minds (Rom. 12:2).
First, we must think more, not less, about death … Thomas Boston reminds us that ‘the less you think on death, the thoughts of it will be the more frightful: make it familiar to you by frequent meditations upon it, and you may thereby quiet your fears…[Saints] ought to be always on good terms with death.’
Second, as we think of death, think of what we will exchange – this life, a vale of tears, for the life to come, where there is no weeping or sighing; this life, marked by sin and misery, for the life to come, marked by glory and blessedness.
Third, as we think of death and as we think of the life that is ours beyond death, we must think of God in Christ. As Thomas Boston told his congregation, ‘[We] have a trusty good Friend before [us] in the other world.’ As wonderful as it is to think of leaving sin, misery, and death behind, and of being reunited with believing loved ones, what makes heaven ‘heaven’ is the presence of Jesus Christ Himself.
So think often of death … And the time to start setting your mind on Christ is … right now.”
Guy Prentiss Waters, Facing the Last Enemy, 52-53.
