Keep Your Fork

Opening: The Math of Mortality

Every year, about 56,597,034 people die.

That works out to roughly 155,000 people a day, 6,458 an hour, and 108 people every minute.

Which means every second two people die.

For every breath you take, approximately seven people have died.

Death is everywhere.

It is no respecter of age or status.

It comes for everyone.

Recently I visited Ukraine and traveled through many villages.

Each town and each city had hundreds of fresh graves—lives cut short by war.

The sight was overwhelming: rows of new mounds, flowers still bright, names and dates painfully recent.

It was a stark reminder that death is not only inevitable; sometimes it comes suddenly, unjustly, and in staggering numbers.

Later, back home, I walked again through a quiet cemetery.

Graves surrounded me—some extravagant, others simple.

Each stone tells the same story: someone was born, someone lived, and now someone has died.

One stone in particular always catches my eye.

Its dark granite surface is etched with deep, jagged letters that seem almost angry against the soft green grass, a stark reminder that every life—whether gentle or turbulent—ends the same way.

Nearby are angel statues and stones with half-finished inscriptions: the spouse’s name is carved with a birthdate but the death date is still blank.

Can you imagine that?

Standing over the very ground that will one day hold your body, knowing that sooner or later a final date will be chiseled in.

From Ukraine to the Ages: The Same Reality

Whether it’s a war-torn field in Eastern Europe or a peaceful cemetery at home, the story is the same.

No matter how brilliant or unknown, death eventually silences every human voice.

Good Friday and the Hereafter

Today Christians remember the death of Jesus—Good Friday.

Perhaps you attended a service where His brutal execution was retold.

Over the years I’ve sat through Protestant, Catholic, even Jehovah’s Witness services.

We all pause to remember the cross.

A story is told of a minister who visited an older man.

The minister said, “At your age you should be thinking about the hereafter.”

The man grinned: “Oh, I think about the hereafter all the time. No matter where I am—in the living room, upstairs, in the kitchen or the basement—I ask myself, ‘What am I here after?’”

It’s a funny line, but it hides a serious question:

How much time do you spend thinking about the real hereafter?

Even John Lennon raised the issue when he sang Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try.

But what is the truth?

What really happens when you die?

Three Historic Answers

Across history only three basic answers have ever been offered:

1. Death is the end.

When the body dies, consciousness ceases.

Like the old saying about Rover: dead all over.

This is the pure materialist view.

2. Life really begins at death.

Some propose reincarnation, an endless wheel of birth and rebirth.

Ancient Greek thinkers spoke of the soul being trapped, finally released at death into “real” existence.

3. The Christian claim.

Life is meaningful now and continues eternally.

Heaven is a place of perfect joy, unbroken relationships, and worship of God.

What sets Christianity apart is that its founder rose from the dead.

Buddha, Confucius, Muhammad, Gandhi, Mary Baker Eddy—none ever claimed an empty tomb.

But the apostles staked everything on this one announcement: Christ is risen indeed.

Two Deathbeds: Two Destinies

Consider Voltaire, the celebrated skeptic who wrote page after page mocking Jesus.

On his deathbed he cried out, “O Christ, O Lord Jesus, I must die abandoned by God and man!”

His agony was so great that even his attendants fled the room.

His nurse later said, “For all the wealth of Europe, I would never watch another infidel die.”

Now contrast that with a woman of quiet faith who once told her pastor, “I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand.”

The pastor blinked. “A fork?”

“Yes,” she said. “All my life, at church suppers, the best words I could hear were, keep your fork. It meant dessert—pie, cake—something better was coming. At my funeral I want people to ask, Why the fork? Then tell them, Because something better is coming.”

What a testimony!

That woman had a better grasp of heaven than many theologians.

She knew that death is not the end—it’s the table set for the real feast.

Longings That Point Beyond

Why do such stories stir us?

Because, as Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, God has planted eternity in the human heart.

We carry longings this world can’t satisfy:

Relationship without the pain of separation.

Justice where wrongs are finally righted.

Significance that outlasts our fading bodies.

Beauty unspoiled and everlasting.

Every culture has tried to explain these yearnings.

In our modern West, interest has focused on Near-Death Experiences—from Embraced by the Light to 90 Minutes in Heaven and Heaven Is for Real.