Death is Graduation

" Anyways, we really need to talk about death because I'm struggling with understanding it." - LTF'er

Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that perhaps the easiest way to understand death is to see it as our graduation to Eternity. When we finish 8th grade, we graduate and move on to high school. Then college, graduate school, and on to what you call "real life." When we graduate into eternity, we pass on to real "real life."

Here are a few things to remember about death. No one escapes it. Everyone that was ever born dies eventually. We all have our turns. Psalm 139:16 says, "All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be." Do we expect our loved ones not to die? Do we get to call the shots as to when they die? If we answered "Yes" to these questions then we are dodging reality. Reality has proven time and again that we and our loved ones will all die. And we don't really have anything to say about when, where, who, why and how. I work on the premise that I can't really tell God how to God when I can't even Lolita Lolita.

Those of us who believe in the teachings of Jesus know this much about what happens when we slip into eternity: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him." (1 Cor. 2:9) In other words not even our wildest imaginings can come close to the joys our Father has in store for our Homecoming. So death is not a fearsome thing. It is fearsome only when we focus on our separation from our dying loved one. When you marry, will you look forward to your new life with your spouse or will you look upon your marriage as the sorrowful separation from your parents? It is also desolate if we see God as a Cosmic Sadist who is bent on making us miserable instead of the loving Father who cannot do enough for us.

When Papa knew his days were numbered, he threw himself into enjoying these last days to the hilt. He encouraged us to gather as often as we could. He would plan pizza parties at 11:00 p.m. He loved having the grandkids all around him and chit-chat with them. No lamenting that the end was near. He just made sure that he was filling every remaining moment savoring what he loved most: family, food, fishing... Three weeks before he died, our 5 sons and 2 sons-in-law took him big bass fishing at Lake Kissimmee in Florida. At our last New Year's eve together, 7 weeks before his Homegoing, we waltzed to Guy Lombardo's "Auld Lang Syne" though he was already having a hard time just moving around. I never saw anyone put all his energies into cramming so much life into his last days. He taught us so much about how to transition from life to Life!

I look forward to that moment in my life when I step over the threshold of death and enter Eternity. And when I do, I shall sprint for Jesus and give Him a body hug which will take some doing because I won't have my body. We are also blessed in that we believe in the Resurrection; that death is not the end of all. We believe that someday we will all be reunited in our Father's house. The only fear I have left is that not all of us will be there; that some of us will be missing. I earnestly pray that we shall all be there! Please make sure we will all be there.

If you get to heaven before I do, please meet me at the Gate. If I get there before you do you can bet that I will be there at the Gate ready to give you my biggest hug. Jesus is the Resurrction and the Life and we who believe in Him will live even though we die. Though we will be separated, we will reunite. In a little while we will see them no more, and then after a little while we will see them because they are going to the Father. We will grieve but our grief will turn to joy. (John 16:17, 20)

"Death is turning out the lights because dawn has arrived."