When I almost died as a young man from a car accident they had to put me to sleep to operate on me. The sleep was so deep that the five or more hours passed by without notice. When I awoke it was like a second later. Although I knew it wasn’t I had no sense of that time. My father died going on nineteen years ago. I have missed him badly and for the first ten years I couldn’t think of him without tears. My father wasn’t a perfect man and many things were handed down to him as I now see more clearly then when I was young. Still no matter, as I loved him dearly with all his good and faults. I catch glimpses of my Heavenly Father’s love from this and how it so powerfully can overlook such things. I was reading this morning when Jesus said to the Sadducees that they were wrong that God isn’t a God of the dead but a God of the living, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In that my thoughts went to how my natural father was doing right now. It occurred to me that when I might see him next that he would have no knowledge of how I have grieved, for those things would have passed away. Also I would have no knowledge left of how I had grieved because those things too have passed away. I saw scriptures of I will dry the tears from their eyes and turn their morning into joy. I believe Him. Behold I make all things new. I happen to believe that process has already started and will be completed. What God would work was quite other than they imagined: not a mere re-awakening, but a transformation. The world to come was not to be a reproduction of that which had passed away - else why should it have passed away - but a regeneration and renovation; and the body with which we were to be clothed would be like that which Angels bear. What, therefore, in our present relations is of the earth, and of our present body of sin and corruption, will cease; what is eternal in them will continue. But the power of God will transform all - the present terrestrial into the future heavenly, the body of humiliation into one of exaltation. This will be the perfecting of all things by that Almighty Power by which He shall subdue all things to Himself in the Day of His Power, when death shall be swallowed up in victory. And herein also consists the dignity of man, in virtue of the Redemption introduced, and, so to speak, begun at his Fall, that man is capable of such renovation and perfection - and herein, also, is ‘the power of God,’ that He hath quickened us together with Christ, so that here already the Church receives in Baptism into Christ the germ of the Resurrection, which is afterwards to be nourished and fed by faith, through the believer’s participation in the Sacrament of fellowship with His body and Blood.5201 Nor ought questions here to rise, like dark clouds, such as of the perpetuity of those relations which on earth are not only so precious to us, but so holy. Assuredly, they will endure, as all that is of God and good; only what in them is earthly will cease, or rather be transformed with the body. Nay, and we shall also recognise each other, not only by the fellowship of the soul; but as, even now, the mind impresses its stamp on the features, so then, when all shall be quite true, shall the soul, so to speak, body itself forth, fully impress itself on the outward appearance, and for the first time shall we then fully recognise those whom we shall now fully know - with all of earth that was in them left behind, and all of God and good fully developed and ripened into perfectness of beauty. From the Life and times of Jesus the Messiah by Alfred Edersheim. I get the picture of a very deep sleep. One where there is no concept of time. One where a day is like a thousand years. It is then I see this most powerful loving being who is the creator of everything and to which all things are possible. It is then I know when I meet my father again there will be no more tears and no more knowledge of them. Neither will our faults be with us anymore but thrown into a sea of forgetfulness. I use to like to think he was looking down on me and even if that were possible to him he would be seeing the finished product of me no longer bound like me in time. Now to him would be the time of no shame anymore. Always before him would be the time of our first meeting in the completed work of Christ. My soul is comforted. This precious seed now planted in my heart. Hope this is a comfort to you
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 14:38:38 +0000
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