Don't Waste Your Corpse

Embed from Getty Images

Unless Jesus returns first, one day your body will be a corpse.  Have you considered how you can best use yours for the glory of God?  Here are three ideas.

1. Seek to let your death be seen.
Although 150,000 people die every day, I have never been present when a person died.  We have become adept at avoiding death, which is perhaps one reason we do not know how to live.  In the old days, people would die at home, with young children around, often with opportunity to speak long and touching last words.  Christian, what better way to show people that Jesus is truly faithful, than by letting them see how you die? 

2. Have an open casket funeral, with pallbearers. 
I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen a human corpse in person -- and most of these times, it was a human corpse artificially beautified by a mortician.  Even during my lifetime, I've seen open casket funerals plummet in popularity.  This is a tragedy.  Staring into the face of a corpse for five seconds or carrying a coffin for five feet teaches more about the brevity of life than five hours of the finest sermons.  

3. Opt for burial, rather than cremation, if you can.
Cremation comes from the Hindu belief in reincarnation.  Burial is rooted in the Christian belief in the resurrection of the body.  Of course if we die in a fire or are eaten by sharks, our bodies will still be resurrected; physical congruity in the grave is not necessary for reconstruction of our new bodies.  Burial is a symbolic gesture, showing Christians believe that there will be continuity between the body we have now, and the glorified body we'll receive at the resurrection. But burials are dying, in part due to the government-backed funeral industry cartel making full burials so much more expensive than cremations.  So you'll need to weigh the costs of both options.