Friday, July 24, 2015

John 11:25 -- On Death and Hope and Comfort

"Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:"
John 11:25


This is a cool promise.  I was writing a funeral program this morning and was thinking about how we deal with death.  It's a hard thing to take sometimes... hard to accept life without someone (or something) we love.  We go through a mourning process, and sometimes feel helpless and hopeless.  And, as with everything else, once we can get some perspective on the situation, God can help us deal with the loss.
One thing that helps as we deal with death is God's perspective.  He has eternity before him, and he knows that life didn't begin here, and it definitely won't end here.  We lived before we came to earth, and we will live again after we die.  This scripture offers us hope that even death can't stop the power of life that God has.  His perspective isn't always ours, and it doesn't always help right away, but I think it makes a vast difference in the way that we think about and approach death.  Another thing that God offers is comfort.  In John 14:18 he tells us "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you."  And he will.  He will mourn with us, just as he mourned and wept for Lazarus, even though he knew he would see him again soon.  Death is sad, and even when we know that separation and distance are temporary, they are still hard.  Christ will never dismiss our pain... but he can give us hope and comfort when we are ready to accept them.
Today, let's remember that death is not the end, and turn to God in our distress.

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