Preface

Life, death, faith, doubt. These are not small things to wrestle with, and I find myself in the middle of that wrestle more often than not.

What follows are two pieces I wrote back-to-back, two sides of the same question: what really happens when we die?

The first, When the World Goes Dark, imagines the cold possibility of nothingness—the belief held by many that when life ends, it simply ends. No soul. No heaven. No beyond. Just silence.

The second, When the World Doesn’t End, leans into faith in God, a Creator, and the unshakable hope that our story continues beyond the last breath.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers. These writings aren’t meant to settle the debate—they’re meant to stir it. To give us pause. To remind us of how fragile and profound life is, and why the question of “what comes next” matters so deeply.

If I’m honest, I find myself leaning toward the latter—the belief in a Creator and a life that doesn’t end—because life feels too heavy, too painful, and too beautiful to believe it all just collapses into nothing.

Read them both. Sit with them. See which one lingers in your chest when the lights go out tonight.

—

When the World Goes Dark

It doesn’t start with a scream.

It doesn’t start with a warning.

It begins the way all endings do—ordinary. A breath in. A breath out. A rhythm so familiar you never imagined it would stop. And then it does.

There is no tearing sound, no explosion of light, no tunnel lined with loved ones waving you home. There is no whisper from beyond, no hand reaching through the veil.

There is only the dark.

At first, you expect more. You wait for the voice, the dream, the step into eternity you were told would be there. But waiting implies time. And here—there is no time.

Seconds do not pass. They do not exist. The mind that used to measure them—tick, tock, heartbeat, sigh—has gone silent.

And in that silence, the unraveling begins.

The names you carried so carefully—the ones etched into your bones, the faces you swore you could never forget—fall like sand through an open hand. You don’t lose them. Loss requires awareness. They simply… vanish.

Gone are the birthdays, the holidays, the fights you regretted, the laughter you clung to. Gone are the promises you made, the secrets you held, the songs you sang when no one else could hear.

The body you dressed and fed and shamed and loved lies still, but you are not there to feel its weight. No ache in the knees, no hunger in the stomach, no trembling in the hands.

There is no hunger at all.

No thirst.

No desire.

No fear.

Because there is no you to feel any of it.

The dark consumes not with malice, but with indifference. It is not cruel. It is not kind. It simply is.

And the world—your world—ends.

The clock ticks on in the kitchen you once called home. The sun rises on the streets you once walked. People laugh, and cry, and dream, and ruin themselves with the same stubborn hope you once carried.

But you are not there.

You will not hear the sound of rain again. You will not see the face of a child again. You will not remember the taste of food, the warmth of a fire, the shock of cold water against your skin.

You will not know that the ones you loved stood over the hollow you left behind. You will not know that they spoke your name, or wept, or cursed the silence that followed you.

You will not know—anything.

The dark is not waiting for you.

It is not something you step into, like a cave or a room.

It is the erasure of stepping. The erasure of being.

It is the lights shutting off in a theater before the curtain ever rises. It is the book slammed closed before the story is told.

It is the absence of story altogether.

When the world goes dark, there is no sound, no shape, no color, no memory.

There is no heaven.

There is no hell.

There is no after.

There is nothing.

And nothing is forever.

—

When the World Doesn’t End

It doesn’t start with a scream.

It doesn’t start with a warning.

It begins the way all endings do—ordinary. A breath in. A breath out. A rhythm so familiar you never imagined it would stop. And then it does.

But the story doesn’t end.

There is no silence that swallows you whole, no erasure of everything you’ve ever been. There is no void waiting to unmake you.

There is presence.

At first, you don’t understand. You expected less. You expected nothing. But what comes is not less—it is more.

The body rests, but you are not gone. The spark, the unseen core of who you are, remains. Not by accident, not by chance, but by design.

The Creator does not discard His work.

The names you carried are not lost. The faces you loved are not erased. They remain, clear and whole, waiting beyond what you once thought was the end.

The laughter you feared would be silenced is remembered. The tears you shed are gathered. The promises, the secrets, the songs—they all matter. None of it was wasted.

Here, hunger does not gnaw. Thirst does not ache. Fear does not cling. The longings that once tormented you are not erased; they are fulfilled.

You are not swallowed by the dark.

You are held by Light.

Not light like the sun, blinding and burning. Not light like a candle, fragile and fading. But a light that is love itself. A love that has no edge, no ending.

And the world—your world—continues.

The clock ticks on in the kitchen you once called home. The sun rises on the streets you once walked. People laugh, and cry, and carry your name on their lips.

But you are not absent.

You are known. You are remembered. You are more alive than you ever were in flesh and bone.

When the last breath leaves your lungs, you do not vanish. You are carried.

Carried into arms that never let go. Carried into a story that does not close. Carried into the presence of the One who spoke stars into the sky and still thought to shape you, love you, call you His own.

When the world doesn’t end, there is sound, and shape, and color, and memory.

There is heaven.

There is God.

There is life.

And life is forever.

Published by Jeff

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