"But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words." 1 Thessalonians 4-18 (NKJV)
These are my own thoughts regarding my own experience and belief regarding the passing of someone that I love very deeply. I use the current tense because I believe that our God created us to be eternal spirits and that the passing from this life only moves us into the next according to God's plan. I wrote some of my thoughts out and posted them here in the hope that they might help someone else. Again, my thoughts are my own based on my knowledge and study of scripture and my experience with my awesome God and anchor of my hope...
The most critical issue in the passing of a believer is secured by their true faith in Christ, so what remains to be dealt with are any issues regarding those of us who continue to love them and are left behind in the aftermath. Our perspective in their passing, as we may experience sorrow, could be important to our own relationship with our God. And remembering to seek His perspective is always going to be the right move.
"Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations." Psalm 100:3-5 (NKJV)
Believing and being devoted to Christ, I still must confess that I know first hand that it's possible for the human heart, at uninvited moments, to draw a sharp breath, filled with the weight of a sudden memory of someone close who's passed from this life... and let it out in a heavy, powerful, sigh. Especially when the one departed is your own child.
In my humanity, I find myself occasionally and unexpectedly subject to a rush of uninvited, yet invading, fresh sorrow at times, in spite of what I know. It can come when death has come calling so seemingly unfairly for a loved one. My sorrow though, cannot be for a believing soul that's departed, but for myself at their leaving that familiar place that they once occupied in my life - a space now seemingly empty. My emotion however, as a believer and child of God, has to be kept in check and be ruled over by the truth. And my knowledge and understanding that Christ Jesus, my professed greatest love, can fill any void if I let Him, cannot be allowed to become displaced.
Regardless of how they left this life, I hold that the believer now departed, will find themselves at the feet of the One True Judge - The One who knows their heart and mind intimately, understands their frail humanity, and places a high value on mercy. He sees all, knows all, and knows them better than they know themselves. The condition of their heart and the certainty of their belief will be laid out before Him. The final judgment of their disposition will be His alone and the opinions and the bias of no other will matter.
My sorrow, when experienced and fully examined, is for myself and for those affected by the departure from this life of someone who mattered deeply, ... but not for the departed. They are in fact where I long to be and will be when my time here expires. Examining my sorrow though, and giving first deference to my Lord, I'm forced to stop and think about it clearly from a perspective much higher in position than that of my flesh...
Would I trade the gift of the presence of that person in my life, the one who's now departed, in order to avoid the emotional loss of their presence now? Certainly not! If indeed I've been blessed by their presence in my life, their presence was a gift from the Giver Of Life. Is not life itself a gift from God and His determination to place any life where He chooses ... an act of His will alone? I believe that His placement of those we've loved, and have been loved by, has been by His choice to place them in our proximity to gracefully bless us. He could have placed that precious spirit anywhere else and in proximity to anyone else, but He allowed me to love and be loved by them. It was a very precious gift.
So if that life, that has now moved into the next, meant so much to us that we feel grief at its departure, isn't that evidence that their placement in our lives for a time was itself a gracious gift to us? Were we not blessed by God to have been privileged to share that life that has gone back to Him who gave it in the first place? I believe that in His grace to us, our God in His kindness, loaned them to us for a time, and for that He deserves our loving thanks.
In light of those thoughts, I feel confident that our first and higher calling, above any emotion or grief that we may feel, is to offer gratitude to our God for that gift of life that we were blessed to share. I say this because I believe that He purposely chose to place them in our lives. He could have placed them anywhere in the world - in any nation, race, culture, or nowhere at all, ... but He chose to share them with us. If we feel grief at their departure, it means that their presence with us was a blessing - one that our Father God chose to share with us. Above all others, His perspective is the truth and what matters most ... and as His children we dare not be found ungrateful. Our responses to Him are of the highest importance in all of life.
It's my certain, most sure, belief that the most important thing that we do in all of life is to respond to God ... and that we dare not lose that perspective.
For what we might have never known, but were blessed by God to share, may our hearts in true gratitude thank Him for sharing for a little while, what was never actually ours ... but only His all along.
In Scripture...
"He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" Micah 6:8 (NKJV)
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