"Grandpa is no longer with us."
With those words my daughter passed on the news that made this, for me, a memorial day. Who would have thought, when I was growing up, that I would hear the announcement of my Dad's death on a telephone speaker in my car? Life moves on, and yet it doesn't. That announcement boils down to the same bereavement whether it is reported on a car telephone or, as in former years, sent by telegraph or by a horse-riding messenger.
"Grandpa is no longer with us"
It also represents a brilliant commonality in the story of humankind. It is hard not to be scathingly critical of militant atheists as they reduce death to evolution, to be sadly sympathetic toward religionists who have no true grounds for hope and to be brightly hopeful in the comfort that the Christian message brings by which death is a defeated enemy. Yet for all of us alike death means someone is no longer with us. If my Dad and I had been militant atheists our conversations in the past year would similarly have been nil.
"Grandpa is no longer with us"
The great privilege of the Christian, however, is that when people are taken from us we have those who mourn with us. This is something more spiritual and profound than social sympathy and it is birthed in the nature of God and the influence of the Holy Spirit. No Christian who is part of a Church faces death alone. It is the joy of Church that there are always people who remain with us.
"Grandpa is no longer with us"
It stands out as an exact contrast to the end of the Gospel. Never, ever, will that simple phrase be true of the Lord Jesus who ended up saying, "and Lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age" My Dad was great. My Saviour is greater still and by far.
With those words my daughter passed on the news that made this, for me, a memorial day. Who would have thought, when I was growing up, that I would hear the announcement of my Dad's death on a telephone speaker in my car? Life moves on, and yet it doesn't. That announcement boils down to the same bereavement whether it is reported on a car telephone or, as in former years, sent by telegraph or by a horse-riding messenger.
"Grandpa is no longer with us"
It also represents a brilliant commonality in the story of humankind. It is hard not to be scathingly critical of militant atheists as they reduce death to evolution, to be sadly sympathetic toward religionists who have no true grounds for hope and to be brightly hopeful in the comfort that the Christian message brings by which death is a defeated enemy. Yet for all of us alike death means someone is no longer with us. If my Dad and I had been militant atheists our conversations in the past year would similarly have been nil.
"Grandpa is no longer with us"
The great privilege of the Christian, however, is that when people are taken from us we have those who mourn with us. This is something more spiritual and profound than social sympathy and it is birthed in the nature of God and the influence of the Holy Spirit. No Christian who is part of a Church faces death alone. It is the joy of Church that there are always people who remain with us.
"Grandpa is no longer with us"
It stands out as an exact contrast to the end of the Gospel. Never, ever, will that simple phrase be true of the Lord Jesus who ended up saying, "and Lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age" My Dad was great. My Saviour is greater still and by far.
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