A Strange Victory

This sermon was for the family of a nineteen-year-old man and deals with the problem of young people dying.

Death is seen as a friend when it comes to a loved one in the fulness of years, when the prospect is no longer for a full life but instead for a limited, and sometimes painful, existence. And so the Greeks spoke of a good life being capped by a "good" death, one that came with dignity, and peacefully, at the end of a long and useful life. Often we speak of how peacefully someone died. However, the death of a young person, like Doug, who died at the age of nineteen, strikes hard at our composure, and can even shake our faith to its foundations. The Scripture passages do not offer an easy answer to questions that often arise at these times, but I believe they offer the …