4 And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away."
5 Then He who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new." And He said to me, "Write, for these words are true and faithful."
6 And He said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.
It's helpful, from time to time, to recalibrate our thinking, to contemplate that while we are here on earth, we are citizens of another realm, and we are actually, according to the Bible, aliens and strangers here. I've heard it said that heaven is a much more real place than what we inhabit now - it is our eternal home, and we can recognize that what we have here pales in comparison with what God has in store for us. We can have the assurance and anticipation of heaven, living life with that earnest expectation of being there with Him.
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The apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 1 about Christ being "magnified in my body, whether by life or
by death." That's from verse 20. Reading on, we can see:
21 For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
22 But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I cannot tell.
23 For I am hard pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.
24 Nevertheless to remain in the flesh is more needful for you.
Here's the story of a couple who glorified God in life - and death! They had been married for 63 years and they actually died on the same day, but not in an accident!
GetReligion.org lauds South Dakota television station KSFY for highlighting the role that religious faith played in the couple's lives...and their death. (updated link)
In the opening words, according to the Get Religion site, you can read:
It's one of those stories that rarely comes around once in a lifetime. A story of an elderly man and woman with incredible faith and 63 years of marriage.
As their health got worse, their faith and love for God, their family and each other grew stronger until the very end.Get Religion continued to quote from the TV station's continuation of developing the story of Henry and Jeanette De Lange, including the faith overtones:
On that Sunday, two of their five children were with them as well knowing there wasn't much time.
"[The doctor] said your dad's pulse is worse. I wonder if he'll go first," Lee said. "About five minutes later, the aid said I think your mom will go very soon. It was 5:05 p.m. at that point."
Not long after, at 5:10 p.m., she did.
"We read Psalm 103. We didn't quite get done. She passed away very, very peacefully. Incredibly peacefully."
"My brother Keith said to my dad, said 'mom's gone to heaven. You don't have to fight anymore, you can go too if you want'. He was laying in bed. He, for the first time, opened his eyes, looked intently over where mom was. Closed his eyes back down. Laid back down, died about 5 or 10 minutes after that," Lee said.
The clock on the wall said 5:30 p.m. when Henry went to heaven, twenty minutes after his beloved wife.
"We're calling it a beautiful act of God's providential love and mercy. You don't pray for it because it seems mean but you couldn't ask for anything more beautiful."The story says that Jeanette had Alzheimer's and Henry was suffering with prostate cancer.
And, there's one more thing. The battery-operated clock on the wall stopped - yes, it stopped at 5:30, the exact time of Henry's death.
The story says, quoting from Lee:
"Amazing. A sign from God that was the right time."It goes on to say:
Even the aid [sic] came in and said he's never seen anything like that in his 27-year career. It's what leaves the De Lange family at peace after losing Henry and Jeanette at about the same time.Lee related: "Mom and dad were Christians. They loved Christ. They wanted so badly to show their love for Christ that they loved one another. It's natural what they do. For them to be able to be a witness in life, also in death... That's cool. Really cool."
There are a couple of things to be said about the promise of permanence. For one thing, the De Langes were certainly committed to the premise of "'til death do us part." They were married for 63 years, and they left this earth within minutes of each other. This is a story that bridges two worlds - the temporal in which we live and the eternal where we will all live, if we know Christ.
You can also think about the promise of perseverance. Even in their health concerns, it was said that their faith grew. The prospect of the aging process is something we all have to look forward to, and even though we may face challenges in the spiritual and other realms, we can continue to trust in God's faithfulness to sustain us.
There is also a promise of pedigree. We don't know what we will leave behind for our future generations, but something Henry and Jeanette left behind was a sense of faith in God and a sense of family. We will all leave behind something for our children - hopefully, in addition to physical possessions, we can look back and say we have modeled and taught the character of Christ and the principles of Scripture, rooted in the love of God and love for our families.
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