SOMETIMES IT SEEMS that death confronts us every day, as if it were an unavoidable fact of life. The tendency is to accept its inevitability. Yet I'm starting to see we can push back against that inevitability and question its validity with impact—because such a claim does not originate in God, good, the only true intelligence.

Even Shakespeare's Hamlet, over 400 years ago, considered pushing back against troubles:

Recently, the world held its breath as rescuers worked to free 13 coal miners in Sago, West Virginia, trapped two miles beneath the earth's surface. When the miners were found, the initial report of their survival brought jubilation. But resignation and disappointment followed with the release of an updated report, revealing that only one miner had survived. The temptation may take over to acquiesce in death's finality and wonder why God did not respond to so many heartfelt prayers.

On the other hand, taking an entirely spiritual view of the situation, seeing each individual involved in spiritual terms, brings hope, and helps lift the feeling of finality from disasters such as these. Mary Baker Eddy, this magazine's founder, affirmed that "nothing can interfere with the harmony of being nor end the existence of man ..." (Science and Health, p. 427). God's loving control can be felt, readily providing deep comfort to survivors—and at the same time shedding light on practical ideas to avert future accidents.

About the time events were unfolding in the Sago coal mine, I received word that a good friend had passed away. This is a guy I've known since high school, and with whom I've remained close. I'd seen him recently and knew he was not well, but still, the news of his death surprised me. For several hours the information hung, unresolved, in my thought.

As I processed this news, I was reluctant to let myself fall into grief. Somehow, it felt foreign to me. I pushed back on it by trying to reconcile my friend's passing with what I've learned of God as eternal Life. I considered some of the qualities he represented to me: gentleness and trustworthiness, for instance, and honesty. I thought of his sense of adventure (he once suggested we go to the North Pole). His devotion to family, his love for friends, and the natural world. His unconditional acceptance of people.

I even wrote those qualities down. And as I did, I was struck with their permanence. Qualities of God remain intact and cannot be lost. God's creation is a spiritual and complete system from which nothing can be taken and to which nothing can be added. If God's qualities are real—and they are—the real substance of our lives can never be lost. Consequently, I reasoned, I had nothing to regret or to mourn. This was comforting to me, and felt much more natural to me than descent into grief.

Pushing back in prayer against the belief of death reduces its ability to hurt us. Questioning death's authority to disrupt is a way to declare God's authority and His ability to maintain life intact. Thinking of my friend in spiritual terms drastically cut into death's power to rob me of my peace and joy. And I saw how expanding my prayer, to see the spiritual nature of those Sago coal miners and their permanent expression of God's eternal qualities, can help heal the void left by their absence. This can help the entire community feel comforted. Praying in this way helps fulfill our individual responsibility to bring healing to the world.

And with practice, if we push back often enough and with enough conviction, we can expect to save others from death—and ultimately even to raise the dead.

Mary Baker Eddy saw life as 100 percent spiritual, and deathless. She wrote: "The universal belief in death is of no advantage. It cannot make Life or Truth apparent. Death will be found at length to be a mortal dream, which comes in darkness and disappears with the light" (Science and Health, p. 42).

Life, not death, is the inevitable.