“Mummy…what is it like to die?”
His mother had spent hours each day playing with him, reading to him and loving him with all of her heart. Month after month she had done this, trying to keep him from thinking about his illness and realising just how poorly he was. As the weeks went by and he got no better, the little boy gradually began to realise the meaning of the term ‘death.’
One day his mother was reading him the stirring tales of King Arthur and the Knights of The Round Table, and the battle in which so many of them had met their death. As she closed the book the boy lay quiet for a moment and then asked the question that had been weighing on his childish heart for so long: “Mummy… what is it like to die? Does it hurt?”
Tears came to the mother’s eyes as she quickly ran to the kitchen, supposedly, to take something off the kitchen stove. She knew it was a question that had to be answered. As she stood in the doorway, she said a quick prayer that the good Lord would give her the words to answer her son. He did! Immediately, she knew how to explain it to him.
“Kenneth,” she said, as she returned to his room, “you remember when you were little, you would play so hard all day long that when night came you were too tired to get undressed and you would tumble into mummy’s bed and fall asleep. In the morning – much to your surprise, you would wake up in your own room, in your own bed? Kenneth nodded. “Well,” his mum continued, “you were there because someone had loved you and had taken care of you. Your daddy had come with big strong arms and carried you to your own room… Kenneth dear, death is like that. We just wake up one morning and find ourselves in the other room, our own room where we belong, because the Lord Jesus had loved us and had taken us home.”
The little boy looked up, his face shinning, and told his mummy that there would be no more tears – only love and trust in his little heart as he went home to meet his Father in Heaven. He never questioned again and several weeks later he fell asleep just as his mummy had said. The mother knew now that her little boy was clothed with a new body, not one of frail flesh that would get tired and suffer, but a new and eternal body, clothed in God’s shinning mercy.
And God Himself will be with them; He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. (Revelations 21:4)
Wealth
There once was a rich man who was near death. He was very sad because he had worked so hard for money and he wanted to be able to take it with him to heaven. So he began to pray that he might be able to take some of his wealth with him.
An angel heard his plea and said to him, “sorry, but you can’t take your wealth with you.”
The man implored the angel to speak to God to see if he might bend the rules. The man continued to pray that his wealth could follow him. The angel reappeared and informed the man that God had decided to allow him to take one suitcase with him. Overjoyed, the man gathered his largest suitcase and filled it with pure gold bars and placed it beside his bed.
Soon afterwards the man died and arrived at the gates of Heaven to greet St Peter. St Peter, seeing the suitcase said, “hold on you can’t bring that in here!”
But, the man explained to St Peter that he had permission and asked him to verify his story with the Lord. Sure enough, St Peter checked and came back saying, “You’re right .You are allow one carry-on bag, But I’m supposed to check its contents before letting it through.”
St Peter opened the suitcase to inspect the worldly items that the man found too precious to leave behind and exclaimed, “You brought pavement?”
How to get the world right!
A father was having a day at home to look after his little boy because his wife was busy and needed help. The mother had gone out and the dad was using the kitchen table to try and get some paperwork done. As he worked away his little boy kept interrupting him and he was getting nowhere. He came up with a plan to keep his son busy and out of the way, in a magazine he found a picture, a map of the world, all the countries were named and he thought that this would make a good puzzle. He took the picture and tore it up into many tiny pieces and then told his little boy that if he could put it all back together properly he would give him some money for sweets.
The little boy went off and the man thought that he must have bought himself a quiet hour or so, but no, within 15 minutes the boy was back having successfully completed the task. The man had a look and the picture was perfect, all the countries were in the right place and not one piece was missing. “How in the world did you do that?” Asked the astonished dad. “Well dad, I didn’t know where all the countries should go so I looked on the back and noticed there was a picture of a man. I thought this would be easier so made the picture of the man and placed the finished picture on a piece of card, then I placed another piece of card over the top of the picture and turned it over. When I removed the card, the picture of the world was complete. You see dad, I thought to myself, if I get the man right, then the world will come right!”
Jesus pointed out that the world would not change until peoples hearts changed, like the parable above tells us:
“If you get the man right then the world will come right!”
A Chinese Story
An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, to collect water from the stream in, each hung on the end of a pole, which she carried across her neck. One pot was perfect the other had a crack in it. At the end of the long walk home from the stream, the cracked pot was always half full.
After two years the cracked pot admitted to the woman that it felt ashamed that it could only do half, of what it was made to do. But the woman asked the pot, if It had noticed the beautiful flowers growing on its side of the path? She admitted that because she had always known about the flaw in the cracked pot, she had planted seeds on that side of the path, knowing that each day the cracked pot would water them. That without the pot being just the way it was she wouldn’t have flowers for her table.
Each of us has our own unique flaw, that makes our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. So take each person for what they are and look for the good in them. Being who we are, is just as important, as what we can do. So fellow cracked pots, remember to smell the flowers on your side of the path.
