Years ago, while I was walking in the field with my two young boys, a bee stung the elder of the two just above his eye. He quickly brushed it away and threw himself in the grass, kicking and screaming. No sooner had the bee been brushed away when it went straight for the younger son and began buzzing around his head. He tried to hide in the tall grass and began screaming for help. I picked him up and told him not to worry--the bee had lost its stinger.

This particular bee can sting only once. It leaves its stinger in the victim and becomes harmless. So I took my younger son over to his older brother and showed him the little black stinger in his brother's brow. I told him, "The bee can still buzz and scare you, but it is powerless to hurt you. Your brother took the sting away."

In 1 Corinthians 15:56, the apostle Paul said that the sting of death is sin. But Jesus took the sting for us by dying in our place on the cross. Death is now powerless to hurt us because Jesus took its sting.

Death may "buzz around" and scare us, but it cannot hurt us anymore. We need not fear God's judgment. All death can do is open the door to Glory.  — M.R. De Haan