Get near to Jesus.
Sorry if that sounds like some toothless religious platitude. It’s not. It’s got jaws like a gator that won’t let go.
The reason is that the antidote to Death is Life. The remedy for Decay is Resurrection. The solution isn’t to stir up more gusto for life, to watch an inspiring Ted Talk, or to read a self-help book on motivation—as genuinely good and helpful as they may be. No, there’s only one thing to do that is likely to have any affect at all: get near to Jesus.
Either he is the Resurrection and the Life as he claimed, or else he is not. Either miraculous things happen when dying or dead people get near to him, or else it’s all religious nonsense.
Jesus never met a corpse that doesn’t sit up right on the spot… They all rise not because Jesus does a number on them, not because he puts some magical resurrection machinery into gear, but simply because he has that affect on the dead. They rise because he is the Resurrection even before he himself rises — because, in other words, he is the grand sacrament, the real presence, of the mystery of a kingdom in which everybody rises.
Robert Farrar Capon (Kingdom, Grace, Judgment)
More than theoretical hope for the great by and by, this is practical hope for here and now.
(Side note: This can be true of groups of people, like a local church, just as much as for individuals.)
