Sermon quotes on Dying
Augustine of Hippo
They, then, who are destined to die, need not be careful to inquire what death they are to die, but into what place death will usher them.
Frederick Buechner
Intellectually we all know that we will die, but we do not really know it in the sense that the knowledge becomes a part of us. We do not really know it in the sense of living as though it were true. On the contrary, we tend to live as though our lives would go on forever.
Robert Farrar Capon
Life itself is resurrection, or else it isn’t life … death is not an inexplicable accident that happens to life; it is the very engine by which life runs. It is by the deaths of chickens, chicory, and chickpeas that you have lived until today. And even the life you now have is a perpetual dying.… For to live is always to be rising from the dead. To reject death is to reject the only possible soil out of which life can come.
Food for Thought: Resurrecting the Art of Eating (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978)
Emily Dickinson
Dying is a wild night and a new road.
Woodrow Kroll
When it comes to life and death, there’s no third option.
Peter Kreeft
He’s what we really need. If your friend is sick and dying, the most important thing he wants is not an explanation but for you to sit with him. He’s terrified of being alone more than anything else. So God has not left us alone.
Taken from Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith, Zondervan.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
It is grace at the beginning, and grace at the end. So that when you and I come to lie upon our death beds, the one thing that should comfort and help and strengthen us there is the thing that helped us in the beginning. Not what we have been, not what we have done, but the Grace of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. The Christian life starts with grace, it must continue with grace, it ends with grace. Grace wondrous grace. By the grace of God I am what I am. Yet not I, but the Grace of God which was with me.
Caroline Leaf
Population studies indicate that something is going terribly wrong: people ages twenty-four to sixty-five are dying eight to fifteen years younger than previous generations from preventable lifestyle diseases.
William Law
If you attempt to talk with a dying man about sports or business, he is no longer interested. He now sees other things as more important. People who are dying recognize what we often forget, that we are standing on the brink of another world.
Martin Luther
Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.
George Macdonald
How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.
Jim Morrison
No one here gets out alive.
Jerry Seinfeld
I saw a study that said speaking in front of a crowd is considered the number one fear of the average person. Number two was death. This means to the average person, if you have to be at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.
Christopher L. Webber
Every day opportunity shortens, our scope for learning our Redeemer’s love is narrowed by twenty-four hours, and we come nearer to the end of our journey, when we shall fall into the hands of the living God, and touch the heart of the devouring fire.
Love Came Down: Anglican Readings for Advent and Christmas
Still Looking for inspiration?
Consider checking out our illustrations page on Death.