I have a friend who, I fear, is dying of brain cancer.  The doctors say that he probably has no more than a few months to live.  It's tragic:  he will leave behind a wife and three children, all of whom are under eighteen years old.  He is only in his mid-fifties.
     My friend believes, however, in eternity.  He believes that even though he will die soon, he will live on.  He believes that he will live on in another form, in another life, a life in the presence of God.  Though his illness is difficult and painful, he endures it, believing that it is only the beginning of something far more wonderful.  His faith sustains him.
     Though I, too, believe in the certainty of an afterlife in the presence of God, I tremble before those who insist that the illnesses of this life are simply steppingstones, and nothing more, to a far greater existence.  Sure, given the inevitability of an afterlife, illnesses, like any part of life, constitute and present passage to death and the beyond.  We experience them, we grapple with them.  Life is not life without them.  But they are not what should be.  They are not what ought to have happened.
     Even if God oversees it, it is still a bent world:  choice means little if there is no opportunity to use it.