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A few months ago, one of my best friends went to the doctor for sinus pain and came home with the worst possible diagnosis: cancer.

A missionary to Thailand, Peter had seen doctors in that country who'd told him he merely had an infection. But on a summer study trip to the United States, he decided to get another opinion.

The American doctors found a rare but deadly strain of sinus cancer caused by either Bangkok pollution or a certain type of prepared fish popular in Southeast Asia. The already sizable tumor was growing rapidly. Without immediate surgery, Peter could die within weeks. Even with surgery and months of follow-up chemotherapy and radiation, his life was hanging in the balance.

By the time I heard Peter's news, he was on a plane back to Thailand, where he had to undergo surgery due to medical insurance stipulations. His wife and three young children awaited him. Something told me I'd never see him again.

It's hard to comprehend God's sovereignty in such situations. They rattle my confidence in his goodness, and they also scare me deeply, reminding me of my own slippery hold on life.

During the past five years, I've seen a number of friends in their early- to mid-30s die of cancer. The first was a coworker who left his job to attend seminary. He passed away before finishing the program, leaving behind his wife of less than a year. A short time later, a friend from my childhood church contracted a mysterious type of leukemia that swelled his head to twice its size. He died in pain in a lonely, overcrowded public hospital in Los Angeles. His younger brother succumbed to the same disease a few years later.

My dread of death is only natural. Human beings, created in God's image, were designed for life—free, everlasting, and abundant. While the apostle Paul welcomed his translation into God's presence, writing that "as long as we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:6), nowhere does Scripture command us to embrace death itself. Death may be our doorway into lasting life, but dying itself is deeply unnatural, the ugliest consequence of humanity's fall into sin. Indeed, death is the implacable enemy of God's good world, withering and destroying his creative work. Fortunately, death will someday suffer defeat at God's hands.

Nevertheless, a better understanding of death would certainly benefit us. As CT associate editor Rob Moll wrote recently in "Go Gently into That Good Night," our society pushes death to the margins of everyday experience as if it were unusual, aberrant, a medical failure. Since we encounter it so rarely, we're inordinately shocked when we do, and we miss the lessons of death that past generations often learned as a matter of course.

One such lesson concerns the virtue of right living. As Moll notes in his article, a healthy familiarity with death affects everything from the songs we sing in church to the way we relate to those older than us to how we regard embryonic stem-cell research. It can also clear our heads of sin's enticements, allowing us to recognize their transience and ultimate fruitlessness. When we view each day with an eye toward the end of our days, we're more apt to see the world as God does—and to live in a way that mirrors his character.

In forcing us to look ahead to our end, death teaches us the value of that which lasts. Christians often have been criticized for having a "pie-in-the-sky" indifference to modern problems. Certainly, we need to care for widows, orphans, and our own aging parents; visit prisoners; and bring the Bible's witness to bear on today's issues. At the same time, anticipating and investing in heavenly treasure, as Jesus put it in Matthew 6, is never irresponsible. The wise prepare now for the inevitable.

With constant reminders of its inevitability, death provides us with the ultimate opportunity to exercise faith. As I round the corner on my 30s, I encounter increasing indicators of my mortality. Some are serious, others trivial. My body doesn't perform as it used to (once I could dunk a basketball; now I'm lucky to touch the rim), nor does it look as it used to. My clay jar is crumbling. Someday, it will fall apart completely. When it does, my faith will face its last, decisive test. I'll step into the unknown alone, trusting Jesus will be there to catch me and usher me into God's presence.

It turned out my premonition of Peter's death was mistaken. Surgery and chemotherapy successfully removed every trace of cancer from his body and likely prevented recurrence. At 36 years old, he can reasonably look forward to many more years of ministry and time with his family.

But someday he will die; as will you and I. I'm not looking forward to it, or to the deaths of more friends and family members. I don't think God expects us to. What he would have us anticipate, however, is a scene the apostle John describes in Revelation 20: "Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. … The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire" (v. 11-14).

Death, the final foe, will someday meet its own untimely end—and we will be there to see it.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

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