I was reading a newspaper article entitled When comfort reading won't cut it: books to restore hope in humanity. Even the title of the article caught my eye, but these closing paragraphs struck me...

Being close to death can help us to notice what really matters. With the End in Mind by Dr Kathryn Mannix takes us into the world of palliative care and shows there is little to fear and much to prepare for when it comes to death: “There are only two days with fewer than twenty-four hours in each lifetime, sitting like bookends astride our lives: One is celebrated every year yet it is the other that makes us see living as precious.”

This is what I hold on to. What can I be doing now to make my deathbed reckoning more satisfying? How do we maintain a faith in humanity? Books help. The feel and the smell. That they exist, that people write them and read them. That always offers me a glimmer of hope on a dark day.

For me, like all of us living now, there is one day still to come which will not have twenty-four hours in it. I don't know when that day will arrive, but arrive it will. The 'deathbed reckoning' awaits and we really do need to have the 'end in mind'. Is it true though that there is 'little to fear and much to prepare for when it comes to death'? It depends. It depends on how God thinks of you and judges you. The reckoning is coming and it will not be in death itself, but after that when we are summoned to the bar of divine judgement. To die as an unforgiven sinner and to face that judgement alone is a terrible prospect: Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgement (Hebrews 9:27). It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31).

The writer of the article raises some really important questions. With her, I ask, What do I 'hold on to'? Unlike her, I have no 'faith in humanity' to give me personal hope for the dark day of the deathbed reckoning (or any other day for that matter). I am not prepared to stake my eternal soul and future on anything that I or any other fallen human being might write or do, no-one can bring me safely to God and gain me forgiveness. Like the writer, I know that some books can offer a 'glimmer of hope on a dark day'; but I also know of books that offer far more than a glimmer concerning that final dark day which will have less than twenty-four hours. The books I am thinking of are the 66 books that make up the one book we call the Bible. This book offers hope, not as a mere glimmer but like the full light of the sun shining in a clear sky, because it tells us about the one person who can rescue us from our fallen state and save us from God's divine, just judgement. That person is Jesus Christ. Trusting yourself, your life and death, into His hands is the one and only way to prepare to face the deathbed without fear and to know that you will not have to face the 'reckoning' for your sins. Why not? Because Jesus died on the cross to face that reckoning in the place of all who trust in Him. Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved (Acts 16:31).