Life After Death (Part 7)

In Mark 9:48 Jesus tells us that hell is a place where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.  Can you imagine burning, but never burning completely up?  Sergeant Brett Pyles was a medic at the Troop Medical Clinic of Camp Victory in Baghdad, Iraq.  His ability to enter the story of the soldiers who died under his care had pressed him to a deeper level of faith.  “When a man dies, it is my job to take out his wallet and handle his paperwork,” Pyles related softly.  “I look at the pictures he has – of his wife or his kids or his parents – and I realized they don’t know yet.  They think he is still alive.  They’re somewhere praying for him and waiting for him to come home.  But he’s dead.  That’s the hardest moment for me.  It breaks my heart, and it makes me realize that I can die, too.  Life can be taken away in a second.  I want to live, but I want to be ready when I die even more.”