Death and all his Friends

Death and all his friends: Fear

John 11:38-57 Woody Allen once wrote: “Death is absolutely stupefying in its terror…It makes our lives look as irrelevant as waves breaking over the sea shore.” Even those of us who are convinced that there’s something better beyond death, still can find the thought of it very frightening. How can we approach our own deaths joyfully and confidently?

Death and all his friends: Grief

John 11:17-37 Is death just part of “the circle of life” (as the Lion King assures us)? Is it “nothing at all, [just] slipping away into the next room” (as one popular funeral poem puts it)? How are we to think about death? And especially, how are we to find comfort and hope when we experience the deaths of those close to us?