Mass graves and such...

How will I die? Would I give my life for a just cause? What if I commit to the wrong cause? I don't want to die just for no good reason at all!

And yet, many millions have died uncounted, unnoticed, in ways that seem perfectly senseless.

"Plastic flowers mark a section of the MASS GRAVES at Sandarmokh, Russia, where thousands of Solovki prisoners were killed and buried. A forest was planted on top of them in hopes that no one would ever find the graves."

And a bit further into the article: "...it became the prototype for the brutal labor camp system to come."

During Stalin's reign of terror, a disillusioned ARTHUR KOESTLER wrote "Darkness at Noon", to preserve the memory of friends who had perished in the insanity.


By the end of the sham Moscow trials, his main character, an old idealistic Bolshevik, awaits his final walk down the dank cellar stairs:

   "Six and a half steps to the door, whence they must come to fetch him, six and a half steps to the window, behind which night was falling. Soon it would be over. But when he asked himself, For what actually are you dying? he found no answer."

Crumpled on the cellar floor, bullet in the back of his head, come the last two paragraphs of the book:

   "A shapeless figure bent over him, he smelt the fresh leather of the revolver belt; but what insignia did the figure wear on the sleeves and shoulder-straps of its uniform - and in whose name did it raise the dark pistol barrel?
   "A second, smashing blow hit him on the ear. Then all became quiet. There was the sea again with its sounds. A wave slowly lifted him up. It came from afar and travelled sedately on, a shrug of eternity."

How many have died without knowing in whose name the dark pistol barrel was raised against their heads? What were their final thoughts? How many of their loved ones never received a definitive word regarding their fate? (“closure” would be the word of choice today, right?)

Some have had the luxury of choosing a course for their lives that led to the death that they ended up facing. Many believers have made the ultimate sacrifice as part of Jesus' avant-garde. Often, they were not allowed to see in life the victory that they had a hand in securing.

Tragically, though, many have merely been swept away by the tide of whatever ideology or maniacal agenda that has alleged the right of some to determine the fate of others.

More worrisome on a personal level: I do not find a clause in my contract with Jesus that makes me an elite policy holder, exempt from whatever can happen to the "masses" (sometimes I hate that word). I have no way of knowing when or how I will die... it could actually end up being in a most trivial and apparently pointless manner.

Before I succumb to an anxiety attack here, I need to remember: regardless of the form it takes, the death of a believer in Jesus Christ amounts to more than a "shrug of eternity."

Come to think of it, the only senseless death is when someone goes into eternity without Christ in his heart... whether peaceful and properly recorded on this side or not.

“And of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was born in her: and the highest himself shall establish her. The LORD shall count, when he writeth up the people, that this man was born there. Selah.” (Psalms 87:5-6)

However senseless the circumstances surrounding my death may appear, I am going to heaven when I die! I was born there. He has promised to take me home. He receives and attends to each newly arrived saint in glory with the fulness, love and perfection that only God is capable of.

For those of us who have embraced -by faith alone- the Gospel of Jesus Christ: we are remembered... we have been received... we shall be rewarded.

The LORD shall count!