I remember that until I lived in Brazil, back in 2008, I hadn’t actually seen a dead body.
Sure, I had been to funerals like so many of us, but unless it was an open casket, I had no experience of this at all. After living in Brazil for just a short time, I did.
Let me just be clear that I am not being insensitive here talking about a death narrative in the wake of this pandemic, as I said at the start of this blog these titles came about before this, but I think that now especially is actually an important time to notice this.
In Brazil and in chatting to my friends from various countries in Africa I had started to realise a while ago that men in the UK don’t have a narrative ready for death.
For so many the moment of a family member dying or a mate takes us completely off guard and unaware that the reality is, we are all going to die.
I think in the West we have developed an art form of helping us pull a thin veneer of the reality of death. Perhaps we could argue that this has started to be chipped away in light of Corona Virus. We are encouraged to dye the greys, buy specialist wrinkle cream (or filler) to hide the lines that age us and give away our real age. However, the reality is that we are ageing, death is a certain reality and I think as men we need to be honest about it with a death narrative that is shaped on hope and faith.
As a Christian man I believe that Jesus has overcome death, he has beaten death. What does that mean? Well, I believe that when I breathe my last breath in this body, this earth suit is no longer required and I move on. Death is no longer the end, the eternal separation between God and Man, there is more and the bridge is the blood of Jesus.
With that foundation, with that rock in our lives we can have a narrative of death that is full of hope, faith and joy that we will go on! So many men need to hear that death narrative guys, it’s Good News!
Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash
