Today I received a note from a good friend..."my dad's cancer is progressing. His time here is probably down to days..." Lloyd has been ill for some time; he is a shadow of the man we knew when he was healthy. When I read my friends words I was transported back to the last time I was with his dad. It was years ago. I am saddened by this news, concerned for the grief this final act of life will introduce to my friend and his family...and not.
Lloyd will lose his life; but not once has he been in danger of losing his hope: the certain promise that he, as a believer in Jesus Christ, will finally be transported into the presence of His Lord and Savior, there to enjoy life as HE designed it to be.
Thanks be to God for the hope we have in Christ, and the healing death brings for those who have embraced Christ through saving faith. For these death is not something to be feared; it is a gracious provision that carries us back into a "face to face" real-time relationship with God. Without death, we become eternal beings, like Lucifer and the legion of angels which were cast out of heaven because of their rebellion...eternally separated from God, without hope of redemption.
Death became the modality that God uses to foil Satan's attempt to co-opt God's crowning creative act, the human race. So then, death is the definitive "check-mate" and demonstrates God's mastery; always steps ahead of evil and the chaos of sin. Genesis 3 describes the event that initiated the rebellion of Adam and Eve to sin and it's necessary result, death; it's also here that we learn that death is part of God's bigger plan for hope and the redemption of human-kind.
The rest, is history...1 John 4.9,10 "God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins."
Lloyd knows that love is a four letter word, spelled H-O-P-E; more importantly, he knows that death simply marks the first day of the rest of his life...
Maranatha...
(Continued in "The rustling leaves..." October 27, 2011)
