Something Worth Celebrating.

Nothing focuses the heart and mind on things like death, mortality, and the weakness of this world of flesh like losing a loved one, like the passing of a Family member or friend.  Yet, what we imagine in our sorrow and suffering to be the End of this present phase of life is merely the Beginning of a real Life beyond the walls of this world, the first chapters of an Eternal Adventure.  We exist in God, with God, and for God, and when our Time in Time is done, He calls us Home— upward and onward— back to the bosom from which we were birthed, back to Himself.  And there we may delight in Him, and He in us, without the profound limitations of Time, Space, sin, selfishness, ego or arrogance.  It’s there we become what we were always meant to be— true Sons and true Daughters of a glorious and gracious God!

The earliest Followers of Jesus most certainly grieved the loss of those they loved.  For they were as human as human can be ...flawed, faltering, flailing at Jesus like Peter sinking beneath stormy waves.  But they did something we rarely do in a post-modern, post-Christian culture: they celebrated the reality of Resurrection on the Day of a Believer’s Death.  We have no record of the earliest Church celebrating the Day of someone’s birth, but what we do have is a record of them celebrating triumphantly the anniversary of someone’s Death.  The eyes of faith are able to look beyond their present pain, beyond the heart-wrenching, gut-punching loss, and with an eternal perspective rejoice in the deliverance of their loved one.  With deep trust in the goodness of the Father’s heart, they imagine all the joy, all the beauty, all the intimacy and adventure this person is experiencing— right now, this very moment— in the Presence of Jesus.  They can see through the eyes of faith a Universe of delights, undreamed of on Earth, waiting to unfold for Jesus’ Beloved.  And they celebrate.

The 1^st century Church, Jesus’ earliest Followers in the Faith— battered, beaten, persecuted and opposed— stood on the solid ground of Scripture and declared no matter what, no matter when, and no matter how, you cannot kill those alive “in Christ Jesus”!  You can only help me reach my Destiny.  You cannot change it, alter it, or annul it, you can only be an instrument in Abba’s hand to push me on toward the final step.  That’s all.  So, in the laughing words of Lazarus, “Give it your best shot.  What are you going to do... kill me?  Haaaaa haaaa haaaaa.  I’ve been dead ...and now I’m not.  You going to threaten me with Death?  I know the Author of Life.  He raised me from the grave, and He loves me as His Own!”  See, this is an Eternal Perspective, this is what it means to live with a heart full of passionate trust in the innate goodness of God.

In AD 125, a Greek named Aristides wrote to a friend about ‘the Way,’ and why this ‘new religion’ as he called it was so successful: “If any righteous man among the Christians passes from this world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God, and they escort his body with songs and thanksgiving as if he were setting out from one place to another nearby.”  The 3^rd century the Church father Cyprian said, “Let us greet the Day which assigns each of us to his own home, which snatches us from this place and sets us free from the snares of the world, and restores us to Paradise and the Kingdom.  Anyone who has been in foreign lands longs to return to his own native land….  We regard Paradise as our native land.”  Amen and hoooaahhh!  How beautiful would it be if we took up the practice of the early Church and began, not to mourn, but to reflect on and rejoice in the promotion of our Brothers and Sisters on the Day of their physical death?  “He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things [a fallen world with all its sinful selves] has passed away.  He who was seated on the Throne [Jesus Christ the King] said, ‘See, I am making all things new!’  Then He said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true’” {Rev. 21:4-5}.  Now that’s something worth celebrating.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
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Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously