21 John – Glorifying God

By Richard

We often think of life as and opportunity to glorify God, but the risen Jesus spaks to Peter about his future death and hints we’re told, “at the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.”

Have we ever thought of death and an opportunity to glorify God. He probably seems us to as the least glorious of events that we will have to face.

A colleague of mine recently died of cancer at 46. She had a tremendous faith and her death had a strange beauty about it (she spent the last few hours saying goodbye to her children and husband before he asked Jesus to come and take her home…and within minutes Jesus did just that). So “amazing” was her death that the nurses who attended at the time wanted to know more about the faith that she had.

Now many of us don’t have the luxury of knowing when we will die, but the truth is this, how we live today will affect the way that we glorify God in our death. In a sense all of life is a preparation for the moment of death. Death becomes for us the instant in which the thin curtain between this life and the next is pulled back and we see the greater realities of heaven and the lesser realities of our earthly life. With God will to examine our years of life on earth – were they lived by faith (directed by our anticipation of meeting God), or were they lived by “physical” (focused on gaining the world and little emphasis on God).

The reality is that we will all die. Start working towards that moment when you will glorify God in your death.