When I was in my teenage years, my mother was at the bedside of her father - my wonderful grandfather, "Dad Brown" - just before he died. He was hardly religious - even though he never objected to my attending the local Methodist church - and we never spoke of God, the hereafter or anything remotely resembling religion. My grandmother made up for his lack of beliefs because she always told me bedtime stories. These hardly comforting tales were like, "There was this little boy who was very bad and the devil punished him ... a lot. Good night, sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs bite." I always wondered who that little boy was. I think I know who she was referring to. Anyway, just after Dad Brown died, mom came over to me and told me, "As Dad was dying, he sat up in bed and said, 'Mary! It's wonderful!"'
       That didn't mean much to me then, but time has added a lot of examples for me to consider. There was a church member down in Sarasota who died on the operating table and was resuscitated not once but twice. When he finally came around, he shouted at the staff, "I was doing just fine! Next time, leave me alone!" He told me his story when I visited him and asked me not to tell anyone because they might think him crazy. He said, "John, I stood in the most beautiful place you can imagine, and I saw everyone I ever knew. I'll do what I have to do while I am alive, but I have no fear whatsoever about death. I can't wait!"
        There are thousands of stories much like these as well as many studies concerning "near death experiences" and the results are impressive even though hardly falling in the scientific realm. I am comforted on the one hand but hardly ready to be an experiment to prove the afterlife to skeptics.
       The most positive proof I need are the words of God which speak to a mortal like me, "I am the Resurrection and the life; those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die."
       In a world that seems to be so interested in the proofs of creationism and the arguments of evolutionism, it would be a lot more productive to teach and preach the words of comfort and resolution.
       I personally believe I just had to come to the conclusion that what I see in the mirror is me and that means, "Be what you is because if you try to be what you ain't, then you ain't what you is." I do not stand on the shoulders of intellectual giants. "So where'd we come from and where will we go?" Good question.
       Since I am a blend of faith and science, I hold fast to my biblical background and like what Astrophysicist Dr. Neil Tyson said. This is not verbatim. "Billions of years ago, a mass of compact existence exploded its rich molecular chemicals into this vast infinite universe and from that came life. We are all connected and that makes me smile."
       In faith, I believe that existence to be God and in faith believe that we are the creation of that existence. For a time, we left home and we will all return home. That makes me smile.
       While we are wandering around this great universe in whatever form, shape or being we exist, it is our destiny to do our best to be responsible and accountable and above all, to be good and decent to ourselves and every other being we meet.
       One of these days, we will all pass through the door we call death to a life that can only be explained by Dad Brown,   "Mary, it's wonderful!", or as the man in Sarasota explained, "I am doing just fine!"
       That makes me smile.