Daily devotion – suicide
Suicide – it is sometimes called “the death we whisper about”.
Many people who commit suicide appear to be successful people, but by taking their own lives, they demonstrate they were unable to cope and decided to give up.
Dr Karl Menninger said that “suicide is a very complex act,” and so we had better leave the analysis to God.
The Bible does not say much about suicide. It records the suicides of six men:
Samson – Judges 16:30
Saul and his armour bearer – 1 Samuel 31:4-5
Ahithophel – 2 Samuel 17:23
Zimri – 1 Kings 16:18
Judas – Matthew 27:5
Except fort Judas, who “went to his own place” Acts 1:25 – nothing is said about their destiny. Judas went to perdition, not because he committed suicide, BUT because he did not trust Jesus Christ – John 6:66-71.
We at Calvary Chapel Secret Harbour, believe that personal salvation is a complete transaction and that the way a person dies cannot rob him or her of eternal life.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer defined suicide as “man’s attempt to give a final human meaning to a life which has become humanly meaningless.”
There are not too many families now sadly, who have not been touched by the sorrow of suicide.
Tragedy is something we cannot explain or fully understand. But broken hearts are not healed by explanations – they are healed by love and the grace of God.
Jesus Christ died and rose again so that you and I might receive God’s forgiveness, enter God’s family and experience God’s love – this love the Apostle Paul reminds us that we can never be separated from.
Rom 8:38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Rom 8:39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Jesus said, “I will never leave you…….nor forsake you!”