death is evil, but God turns it upside down

St Augustine tells us about death being evil today in A Year with the Church Fathers.

He says that even though sinful people use the law (the commandments of God) for evil by breaking them and becoming sinful, so do the redeemed make good use of death by being redeemed through it.

And so we see this in our own lives. First, the daily dying to ourselves that make us more like Jesus. This is an evil - a dying. Dying isn't fun, it isn't pleasant, and there is part of us that hates it (the part that's dying). But God uses it for good in our lives by making us more like Him through that suffering.

And the death that each of us face at the end of our lives, God has also turned into a good and a blessing. He has taken a dead end (literally) and turned it into a door to eternal life. He has shown us that death is, now that He has redeemed it, just a matter of falling asleep. And we know from practicing it every day of our lives what happens when we sleep.

We wake up.

God, thank You for waking us up every morning, so we can learn to trust You to wake us up in eternity.