Hope

And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope.          1 Thessalonians 4:13 NLT

Funerals seem to come in groups, and as you know none are happy affairs. In my time, I have attended several from the soul-less and God-less humanist ‘service’ right through to the joyful celebration of a life lived to the full and lived well. I know a man who became a military chaplain partly because of the question that haunted him: “Where are they now”?

Don’t you think we take some things for granted? For example, life? More so, the Christian life? When we are young, we feel invincible and untouchable and slowly over the years we become more aware of our vulnerability and mortality. Those feelings touch everyone, and it’s just part of life. But do you and I take our Christian life for granted too? That is, if you think of yourself as a Christian (with a capital ‘C’) and not a nominal christian (with a lowercase ‘c’).

Being a Christian makes the biggest difference when you go to a funeral, whether family, a friend, or a casual acquaintance. Does anything ever strike you during the service in church, or the crematorium? How well the songs and hymns are sung. The atmosphere that lingers underneath the outer human grief. The sure and certain knowledge that this still living soul is now in heaven with their Lord and Saviour. Don’t try to tell me it doesn’t matter because it certainly does.

As a believing Christian every one has the cast iron assurance of an eternity in heaven, not only with their Christian loved ones, but with the author of their salvation. I know the minister will always do his or her best to ease the pain of the grieving family and friends, but there is a limit to what they can truthfully say. However there is no limit to the positive words anyone can use to describe the benefits of the faithful believers. Because beneath the temporal tears of the mourning loved ones, lies the certainty of the joy that they have been welcomed to a reward in Glory that we cannot adequately describe.

Let’s do the minister a favour and live life so that he can tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth at our own ‘going away’ celebrations!