“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”
Psalm 116:15
Should Christians welcome death as the vehicle to get us from “this vile world” into the courts of heaven? St. Francis spoke words to that effect. Sometimes this verse is used in that way. It seems to say that God is especially gratified when someone dies in the faith. In fact, the psalmist is saying the opposite. He is saying that the death of a saint is terribly costly to God. That is what “precious” meant for the writers of the King James Version in 1611.
Like all the ancient Israelites, the psalmist sees death as something terribly wrong. He had been about to die: “The pains of death surrounded me…” (v. 3). [But] “you have delivered my soul from death” (v. 8). We can imagine King Hezekiah saying these words after his near-death experience. So when the psalmist says, “The death of his saints is very costly to the Lord,” he is saying that God does not want anyone to die. How true that is! God made us for life, a life that would begin in this world and move without decay, dissolution and pain directly into the world to come. But Sin has intervened and brought with it the great obscenity of all existence – Death. This is why Jesus agonized so in the Garden. He who was Life Incarnate was about to bear all the Death(s) of this broken world.
This is not to deny the reality of eternal life. But the death we now die is not the way God planned for us to transition from this life to the next. Death as we now know it, and as Christ experienced it, is a dark blot on the world, and God hates it.
So if you weep uncontrollably when a sainted loved one dies, know this: God is weeping too. The death of his saints is horribly costly to him – as costly as the Cross.
Called To Be Transformed 