Death is so anti-climactic relative to the world at large. You can live 80 good years on this earth, and then simply die. Those you leave behind will grieve and mourn the absence, but the world at large keeps going as if nothing happened. And yet in the Kingdom of Heaven every death is charged full with God’s death for the world in Jesus Christ. There is no 
more death, in fact, in the Kingdom. In the Kingdom what was once death, in the fallen world, was put to death in the death of Christ. As a result, there is only life, that is for those spiritually (not just carnally) in Christ. This world might continue on in its character of spiritual blindness (and deadness), but in the Kingdom what appears as death to the naked eye, that is for those spiritually in Christ, is not death at all; it is consummation, it is glorification (currently in an intermediate status). Jesus said (and demonstrated) that He is ‘the resurrection and life,’ and thus ‘though you die, yet shall you live.’ Death in the Kingdom is the most climactic event currently unfolding in this in-between; for it is really only a transition into the resurrected life that stands behind, above, and in this world by the Spirit. It is the realization of what we once only saw by the faith of Christ.
The world at large only goes on phenomenologically, to those who live by sight. For those of us who see and hear with the faith of Christ we know that the world at large is circumscribed by the re-creation and resurrection of Jesus Christ (cf. Rom. 8:18ff). We know that the resurrected humanity of Christ is the ground of all reality in the Kingdom. We know that the new creation, that the new time, is first and foremost in the One who is the firstborn from the dead; the One who is the firstfruits of God for the world. In the Kingdom there is no world at large, as if some generic habitat that abstract souls construct meaning for themselves within. The Kingdom is the new world, the new creation, and its King and reality sits at the Right Hand of the Father. Yes, death remains an enemy, but a vanquished one. It has been triumphed over, made a public spectacle of at the cross of Jesus Christ. Death now stings, but it loses its sting when we can walk in step with the Spirit and see the beauty of God’s Kingdom come and coming in the face of Jesus Christ. We can repose in the reality that death has no reality in the Kingdom, and as sons and daughters of the Kingdom, as co-heirs with Jesus Christ we can stand boldly before the throne of grace, which is the ground and reality of Kingdom reality, and stand victorious before the fear and dread the world at large lives with in the face of last enemy.
We are here, then, as ambassadors, as emissaries of the Kingdom life. We are not of this world, but of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is not of this world, but stands on architecture that God alone has constructed from the dust of Christ’s glorified humanity. While, as ambassadors, we might experience the travail and tempest of this far country we’ve come to inhabit as harbingers of the Kingdom, but at the same time we understand that we are simply here for the other. We understand, as Christ did first, that there is a joy set before us that allows us to endure whatever crosses and deaths we might experience here and now. We recognize, as emissaries of the risen Christ, the King of the Kingdom, that there is no death at the gates of Heaven. We experience loss and grief, but not as those without hope.
It is the pain and uncertainty of the experience of death that I have found (in my historical career/profession) is of most concern to those facing the natural demise of the body… to be sure this is our βnatural challengeβ when Christ is not seen as assuming and conquering death, having brought his own into Godβs own eternal life. It is only in Christ that eternity may βencounterβ us in our βfinite present,β not as something that comes βafterβ time, but rather in the hope that meets us now… that βhope against hopeβ (Rom 4:17-18). And it meets us in our realization that in Christ we have experienced Godβs judgement in which what is, what was, and what will be has now and already been determined in Christβs vicarious assumption and actual victory over death.
@Richard, beautifully stated! I was a deep fear when I was walking through my cancer. Even though I speak to the Lord constantly, and I know His voice, there is still a major uncertainty to the whole thing. But yes, to experience the death of Christ now always comes with the experience of His resurrection. I think this is the gift (and yet curse too) of human suffering in Christ. We are plunged deeply, oft times, into the deep waters–deeper than we can swim out of ourselves–and then He reaches down and finally grabs us to newness of life. The more we walk in step with the Spirit, and walk through these valleys, I’d say the “uncertainty” part becomes less and less over time; but of course that is still relative and up against the ultimacy of the living God (who is indeed our Father).