It is an unfortunate reality that we will all face death. It may first be the loss of our friends or family members but inevitably we will be facing our own.
I have come to experience this reality first with the loss of my grandmother, with clients of my accounting and financial planning practice, with the passing of my dad and, most recently, the tragic loss of my 14 year old nephew. It causes pain and emptiness but I have found in Supplements to A Course in Miracles (Foundation for Inner Peace) some passages which have provided me with much comfort. They state:
Death…“merely signifies the end has come for usefulness of body functioning. And so it is discarded as a choice, as one lays by a garment now outworn.
This is what death should be; a quiet choice, made joyfully and with a sense of peace, because the body has been kindly used to help the Son of God along the way he goes to God. We thank the body, then, for all the service it has given us. But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at most in lovely flashes. Now we can behold Him without blinders, in the light we have learned to look upon again.
We call it death, but it is liberty. It does not come in forms that seem to be thrust down in pain upon unwilling flesh, but as a gentle welcome to release. If there has been true healing, this can be the form in which death comes when it is time to rest a while from labour gladly done and gladly ended. Now we go in peace to freer air and gentler climate, where it is no hard to see the gifts we gave were saved for us. For Christ is clearer now; His vision more sustained in us; His Voice, the Word of God, more certainly our own.
This gentle passage to a higher prayer, a kind forgiveness of the ways of earth, can only be received with thankfulness. Yet first true healing must come to bless the mind with loving pardon for the sins it dreamed about and laid upon the world. Now are its dreams dispelled in quiet rest. Now its forgiveness comes to heal the world and it is ready to depart in peace, the journey over and the lessons learned.” S-3.II.1-4.
I pray for all those who are going though hardship, illness and loss and hope that the above passages also provide them, and you, with a sense of comfort and peace.
Please share with us anything that may have comforted you in times of sadness or loss.
A Course in Miracles may be purchased at Booktopia. You may also wish to read A Return to Love which is reflection of the course.