In a home of which I know, a little boy--the only son--was ill with an incurable disease. Month after month the mother had tenderly nursed him, read to him, and played with him hoping to keep him from realizing the dreadful finality of the doctor's diagnosis. But as the weeks went on and he grew no better, the little fellow gradually began to understand that he would never be like the other boys he saw playing outside his window, and small as he was, he began to understand the meaning of the term death and he too knew that he was going to die.
One day his mother had been reading to him the stirring tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table of Lancelot and of that last glorious battle in which so many fair knights met their death. As she closed the book, the boy sat silent for an instant as though deeply stirred with the trumpet call of the old English tale, and then asked the question that had been weighing on his hearth: "Mother, what is it like to die? Mother, does it hurt?"
Quick tears sprang to her eyes and she fled to the kitchen supposedly to tend to something on the stove. She knew it was a question with deep significance. She knew it must be answered satisfactorily. So she leaned for an instant against the kitchen cabinet, her knuckles pressed white against the smooth surface and breathed a hurried prayer that the Lord would keep her from breaking down before the boy, and would tell her how to answer him. And the Lord did tell her. Immediately she knew how to explain it to him.
"Kenneth," she said as she returned to the next room, "you remember when you were a tiny boy how you used to play so hard all day that when night came you would be too tired even to undress, and you would tumble into Mother's bed and fall asleep? That was not your bed...it was not where you belonged. And you would not stay there a little while. In the morning, much to your surprise, you would wake up and find yourself in your own bed and in your own room.
You were there because someone had loved you and taken care of
you.
Your father
had come--with big strong arms--and carried you
away.
Kenneth, death is like that. We just wake up some morning
to
find ourselves in the other room, our own room where we belong--
because
the Lord Jesus loved us."
The lad's shining, trusting face looking up into hers told her
that the point had gone home and there would be no fear....only love
and
trust in his little heart as he went to meet the Father in
Heaven.
He never questioned again. And several weeks later he feel asleep
just as she had said.
That is what death is like."
(From Peter Marshall, Mr. Jones Meets the Master)