June has come and gone, again.
Two years ago, June 28, we lost our beloved grandson (on this side of the vail) to a dragon called cancer. Braden is a constant companion in my heart. He battled the disease and in the end, he lost his life, but HE NEVER LOST HIS HOPE; the certain promise that he, as a believer in Jesus Messiah, would finally be transported into the presence of His Lord and Savior, there to enjoy life as HE designed it to be.
Life is hard, then we die. We will all lose our lives in one final breath; but we need not lose our hope.
Paise God for the hope we have in Christ and the healing death brings for those who have embraced Christ through effective 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 death we would be chained to a relationship of enmity with God; no reverse, no repair--no redemption. NO hope.
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, demonstrating 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."
We know that love is a four letter word, spelled H-O-P-E; more importantly, we know that death simply marks the first day of the rest of our lives, 2 Corinthians 4.16-18...
"Therefore we do not lose heart.
Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet
inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
17 For our light and momentary
troubles are achieving for us an eternal
glory that far outweighs them all.
18 So we fix our eyes
not on what is seen, but on what is unseen,
since what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal."
We will rise--Braden declared "I'm leveling UP," thanks be to God. It's a GRACE day.
We don't get to be here long. What will you do with Jesus?
Life is fast.
Live it well...bN M6.8
White-space is what makes good Art so fetching, great landscape design so dramatic and relationships work. It gives us permission to breath, to be creative, to recharge and recreate. 
