Picture the sinless Savior willingly submitting himself to God to be born into our sinful world, coming to save those who spurned his name. What love is this? Only the love of Jesus. Only he would take off his crown and robe, replacing them with human flesh and a crown of thorns. He left glory to save us. The Hope of heaven came down for you.

I saw the flashing blue lights against the dark night long before I neared them. I began making my way over to the next lane of the busy highway and glanced in the direction of the cop cars—there must have been at least ten—to decipher the cause of all this chaos. There weren’t any crushed cars or breakage along the road. What happened? I wondered. And then I saw.

A body, covered in a bloody white sheet. My heart picked up speed, my whole body succumbed to numbness, and my lips involuntarily repeated a lament to God: “Oh God. Oh God!” I was shaken.

Maybe having access to stories like this in the news every day has made me a bit numb to reality, but seeing a tragic death with my own pupils jarred me. I thought about the family of that person and prayed for them. Gripping the steering wheel, I was suddenly aware of how dangerous it was to drive a car. I thought about what my children would do if it were me under that sheet, or their father, my sweet husband. The person under that sheet could have been me and it could have been you. Life truly is a vapor.

When faced with reminders that death will eventually come for each of us, some people brush it off, refusing to think deeply about something that seems far away. Others might start to think about the afterlife. As Christians, we know the truth that every human will either die in his or her sin and go to a literal place called Hell or they will die hidden in Christ and be brought safely into Heaven.

The season of Advent is a sweet time of pondering Jesus’s birth. We gently place a star on the tip of our decked-out tree like the star that hung in the sky around the time he was born (Matt. 2:9). The twinkly lights remind us that the light of life has come to men (John 1:4). The red, green, and plaid wrapped packages point us to the gift given to us by God (John 3:16). But the birth of Jesus should also lead our minds to celebrate and reflect on the truth that he came to annihilate death.

The Hope of Heaven. . .

A while back, my husband and I read Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven. It left me awestruck about what’s to come for those of us who are in Christ.

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