A high school classmate and brother in the Lord posted this refection on Facebook on his birthday. I deeply appreciated his thoughts and wanted to share this with others...

DEATH OR LIFE .............Today is my birthday.
by Ros Erickson on Friday, May 14, 2010 at 4:27pm

Did you realize that there is no such thing as cold? Nothing in nature generates cold. It does not exist on its own. By itself out in space, it actually is NOTHING. The dictionary says it is the LACK ….. of heat. So by itself it actually is …………… NOTHING.
We create it in industry with machines called refrigerators which do nothing but remove heat. They don’t generate cold. They remove heat. So cold doesn’t exist.
The same is true of darkness. Nothing in nature generates darkness. It does not exist on its own.
By itself out in space, it actually is NOTHING. The dictionary says it is the LACK ….. of light.
So by itself it actually is, again …………… NOTHING.
We create it by shutting of our light bulbs, or by blowing out a match. But nothing generates darkness. So darkness doesn’t exist.
(Thoughts not original. Came from A. Einstein, one of my contemporaries. Hey, he lived until 1955.)
But, here’s where philosophizing takes us. There is no such thing as death. Nothing in nature generates death. It does not exist on its own. By itself anywhere, it actually is NOTHING. The dictionary says it is the ABSENCE ….. of life. So by itself it actually is …………… NOTHING.
We create it by taking away life. We cannot generate death. So death doesn’t exist.
BUT, the comparison breaks down when Christ enters the picture. Scripture says He is life.
He fills the voids of cold, darkness and death. He and only He over comes all. I choose to NOT pass into the NON-EXISTING state of death. I choose to NOT be NOTHING. (Sorry for the double negative).
I choose life…………………….. how about you?
Actually for you theologians out there, I agree that life never ends. It’s a matter of where we spend the “rest of our life” after our body dies. That of course is hell. But here is where the analogy comes back together. The best definition of hell I’ve seen is that hell is ………………… “the ABSENCE OF GOD”
DEATH IS NOT THE ABSENCE OF LIFE; IT’S THE ABSENCE OF GOD. So if I choose life, I choose God.