Words From the Past

We can have comfort that those who pass from this earth, who know Jesus as their Savior, have the promise of eternity with Him. Jesus visited with Mary and Martha, two ladies whose brother, Lazarus, had died. In John 11, we can find these words:
23 Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."
24 Martha said to Him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day."
25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.
26 And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?"

In the Lord, we can have hope - and when we suffer, we can know the comfort of His presence and the encouragement that only He can bring.  He has raised us to new life, and we now can walk by His Spirit through this earth, knowing that we have a home in heaven.  We will reunite with those who have gone before and we will see our Savior and enjoy His presence forever.  So, we mourn for those temporary losses, and we can make sure that we are sharing the hope of Christ with those who do not know Him.

+++++

God has loved us so very much, and He provides His comfort to those who have experienced loss - ministering by His Spirit, His Word - and through other people. 2nd Corinthians 1 provides this reminder:
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,
4 who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
5 For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ.

In 1946, Rebecca received a Bible as a gift for Christmas, almost 10 years after her daughter, Ruby, had died of scarlet fever.  A Baptist Press story traces the journey of that Bible from Rebecca to her descendants throughout the years. In the Bible, Rebecca had written: “Dear children, when you read this and I am gone...I want you to keep close to Jesus too. He is our only pure joy. It pays to serve Him. For like Ruby, this day is coming to all, and we all want to meet in heaven.”

The Bible was given to Rebecca by her daughter Lorine.  The Bible was passed down to another of her daughters, Dorothy, then to her son, Sam. The story says that Sam "loaned" the Bible to a Nashville-area pastor named Erik Reed.  

Erik, Rebecca's great-grandson, had experienced the loss of a child just over three years ago - December 1, 2019. The article relates:

Erik’s son Kaleb battled lifelong health issues that began when doctors accidentally took his good kidney along with a kidney covered in cysts when he was two months old. Kaleb attended school, played and enjoyed games as kids do, but also endured several hospitalizations a year, crippling complications from fungal meningitis and a stroke before succumbing on Dec. 1, 2019.

Rebecca had "journaled grief and hope" in the pages of the Bible, and even before that, after Ruby's death, she had been writing down her "feelings in poetry and prose."  

Erik Reed stated: “When we started reading some of these notes, it struck our hearts because we’d lost a child,” adding, “So many of the things that she’s saying just resonated with us. As I read it to my wife out loud, we were both just in tears.” He added: "She says, ‘Sometimes I’m just so happy, but I can’t always stay happy. Lonely days come.’ So she’s just pouring her heart out. But you see a mixture of sorrow and faith through all of it.”

He went on to say:

“It’s really meaningful to have a piece of history from my own family,” Erik said. “It’s just encouraging for me as someone who’s buried a son and lost a child. There’s not a whole lot of people who share that experience of a relative, of a great-grandmother. There’s a part of me that resonates with her life.

“I feel more than a blood connection to her. I feel a kinship in that we’ve both suffered a sorrow that many people never do and never want for sure.”

The Baptist Press article notes:

Keeping a record of one’s faith can be an important legacy, Erik said, and we never know who will see such writings.

“I’m reading the words of a mother who is grieving, but I’m reading them now, and she’s not grieving any longer. She’s with the Lord, and she’s with her daughter, and the hope that we have in Christ, the promises we have in God’s Word, she has seen the fulfillment of those promises,” he said. “So now I can read them and remember the same. These sorrows will pass..."

Words from the past - reflecting the connection between God's Word and the words borne out of deep emotion. This does indicate the importance of journaling how God is speaking to your life.  That can be in the actual pages of a Bible, or in a notebook.  But, the act of putting words on pages can be a release of what is on the inside.  

Even though there has been a passage of time, the common experience between people can bring hope and encouragement.  In a time when Erik and his family were commemorating the loss of their son, God provided just the right words from a very meaningful source.  We can rejoice that God provides the gift of His presence for us, and will send people - or words - in order to give comfort in sorrow and hope in the midst of grief and loss.