I Precede You
Kim Malthe-Bruun was a Danish partisan sentenced to die for smuggling weapons to a resistance group. He wrote a last letter to his mother trying to comfort her with his thoughts about life after death:
I am an insignificant thing, and my person will soon be forgotten, but the thought, the life, the inspiration that filled me will live on. You will meet them everywhere in the trees at springtime, in people who cross your path, in a loving little smile. You will encounter that something which perhaps had value in me, you will cherish it, to become large and mature.
I shall be living with all of you whose hearts I once filled. And you will all live on, knowing that I have preceded you, and not, as perhaps you thought at first, dropped out behind you… Follow me, my dear mother, on my path, and do not stop before the end.466
This young man’s expectations are not unlike many today. There is pale hope that something of himself will live on in the memory of others. He knows intuitively that he has thoughts and inspirations that are not going to die. But what happens to them?
We need to appreciate the power of the gospel message to bring hope to those with this mindset. In Christ Jesus we are blessed to know exactly where we’re going. The young man in this story also has an intuition that in dying, he will go ahead of the living to a place where they will eventually come. Vague speculation is not necessary here either. Jesus has assured us: “I am going there to prepare a place for you”(John 14:2). Likewise, I believe it is true that, when our time comes, we in turn go to prepare the way for others. This is our joyful hope in Jesus Christ: he conquered death for us, so that we and our loved ones can be with him forever.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.
—John 14:34