Our sensitivities find comfort in continuity and the reliability of certain things and people in our lives. So when something of substantial change occurs, especially in the more intimate areas of our lives, it can have the potential to leave us shaken. Some events have more rattling potential than others and if our perspective isn't truthfully informed, clear and focused, we could be left devastated...
Even though we may have had some warning, the abrupt reality of someone that we love leaving this physical life can sometimes rise up to attempt to overwhelm the truth that we know. I've lived it a number of times now and understand it, but I've also come to allow my thinking to be adjusted by the truth of a far bigger picture. And it brings some measure of peace with it when I know that the person departing this life is merely continuing to fulfill their purpose to have lived here at all.
Maintaining the physical life of our bodies is a major priority from the moment that we're born. We spend all of our lives from the moment we first gasp to fill our lungs working to maintain these physical bodies in a number of ways, so we have a natural tendency to view the life of these bodies as the highest priority. It's a physical reality that we live with. So when someone that we know passes, it naturally seems to us as though they've lost a most important fight and it becomes a loss that we tend to view in most cases with a sense of grief and one that tends to remind us of our own physical mortality.
Suddenly a presence that we once felt comfortable with, a presence that we may have even taken for granted, now becomes the emptiness of a void we can't seem to fill. It's as if an empty vacuum now exists in their place, begging without an answer for something or someone of equal substance, if it were possible, to fill the lonely hole in our heart where they once stood. But there's a different view from the standpoint of the Creator who gave us all life in the first place... and remembering the reality of His view in those moments following "our loss" is all too important.
If we truly know and believe our God, then we know that He sees things apart from the temporary human viewpoint. He knows, sees and feels the weight of our tragedies and our struggles, but He also sees past them. He knows that in His reality - what's truly real and apart from the temporary human view, that He created us as eternal living spirits with a plan and an intention that we should come back to Him after our time spent here. It was always His plan from the beginning and it's only our tendency toward a limited temporal view that causes us to suffer.
After learning what we can about both Him and ourselves in a temporary physical experience, we have the opportunity to become changed - more suited to life in His presence. Our God's presence is where the desire for mankind started and in His presence is where He always intended us to be found in the end. Life here now is a spiritual incubator - one in which we have the opportunity if we take it, to learn about ourselves - who we are and are not, about the God that created us and our place in His plan for eternity. Our temporary bodies here are not our identity or what we truly are - we're eternal spirits created for an eternal life - not a temporary physical existence.
So do we just dismiss any feelings of loss when someone passes from our presence here? No, of course not - we have hearts that miss them and we bare them before the Lord. But we also have to adjust our sense of temporary separation to also accommodate the truth that we know. By our Creator's intention, our time here is a place that we visit in passing - and not our destination. Our destination is life in the real-time, intimate, near presence of the God who created us. So focusing on living only for the here and now is truly a no-gain occupation that misses the far bigger picture and ultimately misses the goal of our intended purpose and destination.
Adam and Eve had an awesome and intimate experience with the Lord that we're also intended to have. They literally heard our Lord walking in the garden of Eden and related with Him openly. We can do that to a degree now, but they knew Him in a way that we've not yet had the ultimate pleasure of. Fortunately as His children, we too will one day have that same awesome and wonder filled pleasure. Having lived here in a place tainted by sin for a time to learn the lesson of sin's decaying effects, the devastating result of disobedience to Father God and our true total dependence on Him, we'll have the future opportunity to join those who've gone before us to experience that close presence in a new place where sin no longer exists. All of our suffering and the decaying of our present bodies will be far behind us and the corruption of sin will no longer torment us... It now no longer torments those children of God who've gone before us.
The ones we may temporarily miss rest easy now if they belong to Christ. They simply wait for us and for the great reunion of the whole family of God's children. The only truly devastated mourning should be reserved for the ones who didn't learn the lesson of a divinely ordered time here - those who heard the good news of the opportunity for reconciliation with their Creator and went on before us stubbornly refusing to repent and yield themselves to the plan that existed before them. The end of their time here is a true tragedy... and one that they'll live to eternally regret.
For those children of God left in the wake of those who've gone ahead, we have a mission and responsibility aside from that of just living out the truth of our repentance and both Father God and those of His children who've gone on ahead are counting on us to fulfill it. That mission involves making it known, as the Holy Spirit provides opportunity, that repentance and reconciliation with our Creating Father is possible and then leaving it to the Holy Spirit to wrestle with those hearts in the making of the ultimate final decision of their lifetime.
Our friends, our family and every stranger on the street was given the breath of life by the same Father God, so consider the value of each before their creator. They're all responsible to make the same ultimate decision. The question is - do they know it? Do they know that they have the option of repenting and making things right with the ultimate authority through Christ and seizing the opportunity to be brought back into His presence? Every one of them has the potential to be a tragedy to the heart of Father God who created them with such loving hope and promise. If we truly love the Lord our God deeply as we profess, then each one of them should also represent a possible deep tragedy to our own hearts because of the depth of our love for Him.
Among those responsibilities and potential tragedies, none could be more humanly intimate to us than those that we might relate to most closely - our spouse, the children that the Lord entrusted to our care, our families and close friends. Do they know by our continuing sanctification and the repentant examples of our lives that the opportunity to make a choice to reconcile with Father God is more than a fairy tale or a passing interest? Have we had the courage to tell them the truth about the peril that they face and the Savior who can redeem them into the joy and wonder of a life walking through life as intended - side by side with the God who created them? Can we say that we've at least gone that far? Those in Christ that have gone on before us now rest in grace and our hearts may mourn their temporary passing, but real potential tragedies involving people that we love intimately and some that we may not even know yet, may still exist before us every day. If we had opportunities to tell them that we didn't take advantage of, will we live to taste of true devastating despair one day? Those having gone on before us, all of heaven, and indeed Father God are counting on us to do our part... is there still time?
Time in... time out. Only the Lord knows the time remaining in the hourglass of any life - every one precious to Him. Jesus loved them enough to die for them. How much do we really love them?
Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40 (NLT)
"No, O people, the LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:8 (NLT)
Even though we may have had some warning, the abrupt reality of someone that we love leaving this physical life can sometimes rise up to attempt to overwhelm the truth that we know. I've lived it a number of times now and understand it, but I've also come to allow my thinking to be adjusted by the truth of a far bigger picture. And it brings some measure of peace with it when I know that the person departing this life is merely continuing to fulfill their purpose to have lived here at all.
Maintaining the physical life of our bodies is a major priority from the moment that we're born. We spend all of our lives from the moment we first gasp to fill our lungs working to maintain these physical bodies in a number of ways, so we have a natural tendency to view the life of these bodies as the highest priority. It's a physical reality that we live with. So when someone that we know passes, it naturally seems to us as though they've lost a most important fight and it becomes a loss that we tend to view in most cases with a sense of grief and one that tends to remind us of our own physical mortality.
Suddenly a presence that we once felt comfortable with, a presence that we may have even taken for granted, now becomes the emptiness of a void we can't seem to fill. It's as if an empty vacuum now exists in their place, begging without an answer for something or someone of equal substance, if it were possible, to fill the lonely hole in our heart where they once stood. But there's a different view from the standpoint of the Creator who gave us all life in the first place... and remembering the reality of His view in those moments following "our loss" is all too important.
If we truly know and believe our God, then we know that He sees things apart from the temporary human viewpoint. He knows, sees and feels the weight of our tragedies and our struggles, but He also sees past them. He knows that in His reality - what's truly real and apart from the temporary human view, that He created us as eternal living spirits with a plan and an intention that we should come back to Him after our time spent here. It was always His plan from the beginning and it's only our tendency toward a limited temporal view that causes us to suffer.
After learning what we can about both Him and ourselves in a temporary physical experience, we have the opportunity to become changed - more suited to life in His presence. Our God's presence is where the desire for mankind started and in His presence is where He always intended us to be found in the end. Life here now is a spiritual incubator - one in which we have the opportunity if we take it, to learn about ourselves - who we are and are not, about the God that created us and our place in His plan for eternity. Our temporary bodies here are not our identity or what we truly are - we're eternal spirits created for an eternal life - not a temporary physical existence.
So do we just dismiss any feelings of loss when someone passes from our presence here? No, of course not - we have hearts that miss them and we bare them before the Lord. But we also have to adjust our sense of temporary separation to also accommodate the truth that we know. By our Creator's intention, our time here is a place that we visit in passing - and not our destination. Our destination is life in the real-time, intimate, near presence of the God who created us. So focusing on living only for the here and now is truly a no-gain occupation that misses the far bigger picture and ultimately misses the goal of our intended purpose and destination.
Adam and Eve had an awesome and intimate experience with the Lord that we're also intended to have. They literally heard our Lord walking in the garden of Eden and related with Him openly. We can do that to a degree now, but they knew Him in a way that we've not yet had the ultimate pleasure of. Fortunately as His children, we too will one day have that same awesome and wonder filled pleasure. Having lived here in a place tainted by sin for a time to learn the lesson of sin's decaying effects, the devastating result of disobedience to Father God and our true total dependence on Him, we'll have the future opportunity to join those who've gone before us to experience that close presence in a new place where sin no longer exists. All of our suffering and the decaying of our present bodies will be far behind us and the corruption of sin will no longer torment us... It now no longer torments those children of God who've gone before us.
The ones we may temporarily miss rest easy now if they belong to Christ. They simply wait for us and for the great reunion of the whole family of God's children. The only truly devastated mourning should be reserved for the ones who didn't learn the lesson of a divinely ordered time here - those who heard the good news of the opportunity for reconciliation with their Creator and went on before us stubbornly refusing to repent and yield themselves to the plan that existed before them. The end of their time here is a true tragedy... and one that they'll live to eternally regret.
For those children of God left in the wake of those who've gone ahead, we have a mission and responsibility aside from that of just living out the truth of our repentance and both Father God and those of His children who've gone on ahead are counting on us to fulfill it. That mission involves making it known, as the Holy Spirit provides opportunity, that repentance and reconciliation with our Creating Father is possible and then leaving it to the Holy Spirit to wrestle with those hearts in the making of the ultimate final decision of their lifetime.
Our friends, our family and every stranger on the street was given the breath of life by the same Father God, so consider the value of each before their creator. They're all responsible to make the same ultimate decision. The question is - do they know it? Do they know that they have the option of repenting and making things right with the ultimate authority through Christ and seizing the opportunity to be brought back into His presence? Every one of them has the potential to be a tragedy to the heart of Father God who created them with such loving hope and promise. If we truly love the Lord our God deeply as we profess, then each one of them should also represent a possible deep tragedy to our own hearts because of the depth of our love for Him.
Among those responsibilities and potential tragedies, none could be more humanly intimate to us than those that we might relate to most closely - our spouse, the children that the Lord entrusted to our care, our families and close friends. Do they know by our continuing sanctification and the repentant examples of our lives that the opportunity to make a choice to reconcile with Father God is more than a fairy tale or a passing interest? Have we had the courage to tell them the truth about the peril that they face and the Savior who can redeem them into the joy and wonder of a life walking through life as intended - side by side with the God who created them? Can we say that we've at least gone that far? Those in Christ that have gone on before us now rest in grace and our hearts may mourn their temporary passing, but real potential tragedies involving people that we love intimately and some that we may not even know yet, may still exist before us every day. If we had opportunities to tell them that we didn't take advantage of, will we live to taste of true devastating despair one day? Those having gone on before us, all of heaven, and indeed Father God are counting on us to do our part... is there still time?
Time in... time out. Only the Lord knows the time remaining in the hourglass of any life - every one precious to Him. Jesus loved them enough to die for them. How much do we really love them?
Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40 (NLT)
"No, O people, the LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:8 (NLT)
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