When our family members and close friends are facing death and dying, we think a whole lot more of the next world. This week I have watched my dad’s body get weaker and weaker as he is running the last mile of his earthly journey. He has always been built with a strong muscular frame that seemed to be indestructible. Time after time things took place that tested his body, like a serious car accident, a heart attack, hip replacements, and cancer. Yet, he revived from each of these and continued to get back into life with renewed zest. Now these earthly attacks have taken its toll on his body and it’ becoming a reality that he is leaving the “tent” to go to his heavenly home. As I looked at dad’s frail muscles and his weakening body last Tuesday morning, it was easy to see that he will soon take his last earthly breath. He has often spoken of his desire to leave this earthly tent and go to his heavenly home. The Bible speaks of our bodies as being more like a tent than a house. A tent gives us the idea of a temporary living arrangement…which accurately describes where each of us lives right now.
“Our bodies are like tents that we live in here on earth. But when these tents are destroyed, we know that God will give each of us a place to live. These homes will not be buildings that someone has made, but they are in heaven and will last forever. While we are here on earth, we sigh because we want to live in that heavenly home. We want to put it on like clothes and not be naked. These tents we now live in are like a heavy burden, and we groan. But we don't do this just because we want to leave these bodies that will die. It is because we want to change them for bodies that will never die.”
(2 Corinthians 5:1-4) CEV
Hudson Taylor, founder of China Inland Mission, in the closing months of his earthly life said to a friend, "I am so weak. I can't read my Bible. I can't even pray. I can only lie still in God's arms like a little child and trust."
(This next paragraph is a quote from a book…SEPTEMBER)
“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without a ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well.”
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.” –C.S. Lewis Jesus said in John 11:26, “Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus taught us that even when a believer’s body dies, the believer inside that body will not die. 2Corinthians teaches us that when we as Christians leave our earthly bodies, we will be given bodies that never die.
Al Yoder
11/9/2011
