2-Timothy_1-7-1: For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
Philippians 1:21

The thought of death deeply terrifies some people. To the one who doesn’t know Jesus personally, it is the horrific passage to eternal suffering. But to the apostle Paul, death was appealing. He knew that to be absent from the body meant that he would be forever in heaven with Jesus—his best friend, his Savior and the lover of his soul. John Bunyan (1628-1688), author of Pilgrim’s Progress, wrote:

Let death come when it will, it can do the Christian no harm, for it will be but a passage out of a prison into a palace; out of a sea oftroubles into a haven of rest; out of a crowd of enemies to…