These Are My JOTtings...

The Eternal Perspective

Yesterday, I attended the funeral of my 95 year old uncle. The fact that we considered it to be more celebration than sadness has probably shocked a few people. "Isn't that disrespectful at the very least to not be terribly down and sad, when someone you love dies?"

We're sad, but for the Christian there is a great deal of relief, too.

My uncle was in a serious state of mental decline. He wasn't the individual that we had known for so many year. After his death we are convinced that he is back to being himself to a greater degree than ever before in this lifetime.

"Brothers, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you will not grieve like the rest, who are without hope." (I Thessalonians 4:13, Berean Study Bible)

I realize that not everyone believes in God. I don't have enough faith to hold to that view. Neither do I understand how they comfort themselves in the death of a loved one.

I only know that Eternity is in my heart.

When I see loved ones become very sick or quite old to the point of their bodies no longer being able to support the individuals, who live inside of the earthly houses, called the bodies, and those individuals finally die, my perspective, that is founded in Eternity, gives me great hope. I have relief that my loved ones have merely changed addresses. No longer do my loved ones live houses in which all of the "phone lines" and "internet service" of normal communication, (i.e. using voices or sign language,) has been cut. My loved ones now live in Eternity, where they live in new bodies with communication opportunities that are exponentially greater than any of the rest of us have in these decaying earthly bodies.

When my brother moved to Taiwan for nine years, it's true that we could communicate by way of the internet or using phone lines, if we wanted to pay about $50 bucks per call back then. However, we could not be with him, physically, every day. We had to be satisfied with the fact that he was still alive. We were simply denied the ability to be in his present, face-to-face.

I can't prove to any other human being that I know my uncle, my mom and my dad are still alive somewhere in another dimension of the spiritual realm that is somehow more physically real than the physical realm in which we live, but I know they are alive. I know that they are more alive, now, and in better youthful health than they were, when they lived in the same kind of body that I currently inhabit.

How do I know? I know it in my core, based on the promise that Jesus Himself gave in the New Testament book of Saint John. John 3:16 has these words. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

"Everlasting life..." is the Strong, Confident HOPE to which I will cling, when it comes my time to cross that deep River, called Death.

Christians don't long for death any more than any other human does. We take remedies, when we are sick. We go to the hospital as is necessary. We try to eat right. We exercise. We pray. We encourage self and others.

Christians long for the Home of Heaven at times, but we realize that it is our responsibility to serve The Lord with every resource and with every moment that The Lord gives to us. We have no right to leave this life before the time of his Choosing. Therefore, we obediently do the daily tasks before us in honor of The One, Who sends us, until His Majesty, The Lord Jesus Christ, calls us Home to be with Him.

The Christian knows that Eternity is real.
The Christian knows that Jesus, The Christ is real.
The Christian knows that Heaven and Hell are real.
The Christian is someone, who wants to spent his entire existence with Jesus, The Savior. (Right now, we do that with our human spirit. When we leave this life we will do that face-to-face.)

When my loved ones died, they went Home to be with their Savior (and mine,) Jesus Christ, The Lord. How can I not be happy for them? They have been given the goal of their very lives, Eternity with The One they love the Most!

I will be with them, when The Lord is finished with my service here. I still have a job to do. Jesus still deserves to be praised and honored by my earthly life.

Glory! Hallelujah! It is a Wonderful Life!

by Jay O'Toole
on December 30th, 2017