“When death is no longer a black curtain behind which an unknown world awaits us; when it has become light behind the curtain so that it dissolves into transparent veils through which a world of divine radiance is revealed; when the prospect of immediate death fills us only with feelings of shame about our past deeds, with concern for the welfare of those we are leaving, but is incapable of causing us a moment’s anxiety about ourselves; ...when nothing remains of death but a friend who teaches us to distinguish between the important and the unimportant, a friend who has become the inspirer of our life’s work; when from the innermost depths of a new being the song bursts forth, ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ (1Cor 15:55); when this has become our constant, basic attitude to life... — then we know what the Apostle Paul was after when he wanted ‘to know Christ... to know the power of his resurrection’ (Phil 3:10).”

~ Friedrich Rittelmeyer, from “The Dawning of Easter.”