Something from Phatmass

There was a post on Phatmass I could reply to, but shouldn't, for I am not Catholic. It is not my place to reply to it, but a portion of it spoke to me. Since I'm not replying to that bit there, I'll do so here. B asked:

How many knives have you had put to your throat?
Has your life ever been threatened?
Have you been in a place where you know if you walk out that front door you may not come home again?
How many of your friends have been murdered?

First question, one. Second question, over a dozen times. Third question, I live in a bad neighborhood, people have been shot to death next door, I take that risk every time I walk out the door (usually at 3 or 4 in the morning). Final question, one.

I'm thanatophobic, I fear death to the extreme. When I dwell upon it, I curl into a ball and whimper and cry, and ask God why I fear it so much. No, ask is the wrong word, I demand of the Creator to know why I would fear it so greatly.

Still, one should not allow threats of violence, implied or intimately delivered, to hold a person back from the love of Christ. We live in a wretched and fallen world, a place where Satan is given reign over people's lives, and the authority to tempt us from where we bow in submission at the edge's of Christ's cloak, so to speak. There are days I nearly cast aside my thanatophobia, not out of some divine miracle of it being taken from me, but because the thought of Heaven should be more than enough to outweigh the sorrows of this life and eventual death.

The point of my rambling? We cannot hope to comprehend Christ's love for us. It is beyond us. We can only pray for those who fall away from that love, that they see it once more; but that they should know, no matter what, He still loves them, and so do we. For it is not our place to condemn, that is God's, it is our place to Serve.