Pat and I thank you all for your words, your notes, your cards, and your prayers these past few weeks since my mother died. Every word, every thought, every gesture has been a great comfort to us and our hearts are filled with gratitude.
The presence of Mom’s absence has become apparent in countless ways. I have noticed it each afternoon. As her health deteriorated this past year, the late afternoon was usually her best time of the day, so I would telephone her and talk with her while I drove home. I have felt her absence even more acutely on Sunday afternoons. For more than 30 years that was our time to talk, a routine we fell into when I first went off to college and long-distance calls were something done sparingly.
But even as I feel the presence of her absence, I am also filled with a sense of relief: relief that she is beyond the reach of cancer, relief that no pain can touch her, relief that she no longer needs to fear yet another trip to the hospital, relief at knowing that she is at peace, bathed in love in the presence of God.
How blessed we are to have the promise of eternal life in God’s Heavenly Kingdom awaiting us at the end of our journey here on earth. At the end of our mortal lives it is not death that comes for us, but Christ himself. So, as Paul reminds us, “if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”
I took comfort in knowing that my mother embraced this promise as she neared the end of her life. She knew where she was going. Her faith gave her the strength and courage to bear her final few months with grace and peace. The twinkle never faded from her eye.
“Death be not proud”, wrote the poet John Donne. “Mighty and dreadful: thou are not so… One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.” This is the promise we take on faith, for it is the promise we have in Jesus Christ.
The absence is real and the grief deeply felt when a loved one dies. Yet even in death there is hope, a ray of light that shimmers over the horizon that reminds us that our lives here are only a prelude for what awaits us: eternal life in the presence of our Lord. Thanks be to God!
Grace & peace,
Pastor Skip
