WHAT MATTERS MORE THAN LIFE RECLAIMED AFTER DEATH

This piece I completed a couple of weeks ago. It is the first installment of a series I plan to omplete to depict the message from the Book of Revelation.  It was not planned to be shown today, however, it is being shown today in God’s terms, not mine, because today, my daughter’s father died, losing his battle against the ugliest of ugly diseases, cancer.  Up until the last I seen, I could tell he was so afraid to die.  He was only 52 years old.  He will be missed so much but no longer suffering and he has now met his maker.

At least in my mind, the word DEATH was a nasty word.  We all know we are going to die, we all know death is inevitable.  However, there is a fine line between knowing and accepting.  Death happens around us often but often too, an afterthought.  The thought of the unknown is immobilizing, unless you know, understand and love the very engineer, artist, sculptor of every cell that makes up the body that is yours.  He is the one who created you and will eventually reclaim you.

Often we push the thought of dying in the back burner but we have to realize that pushing it in the back burner doesn’t mean it will disappear.  Eventually, it will stare us square in the face again and we will have to address it. 

I’m not going to sugar coat it.  Death to me WAS scary.  The first book I read of the bible was the Book of Revelation.  At the age of 14 I tried to understand it but could not wrap my brain around it.  However, as I got older, it was something I searched for.  Until I got to know who God really was and how He was truly the center of my heart, I began to understand why that book was in there.  Its very purpose is not to scare us to come to God, instead to understand profoundly that the place we call earth is just a learning ground to reach that perfect everlasting life called HEAVEN, paradise, whatever you call it.  Suddenly, the life that we thought was IT, is not.  There is a better place.  Eye has not seen, ear has not heard what God has prepared for those who love Him.  How you earn residence to it is a lot less work than a job that pays the mortgage.  The bible says, it is easier for a camel to pass though the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven.  Ok, well, a camel passing through the eye of a needle is just so unthinkable, it’s not even funny.  Loving God with all your heart, accepting Jesus, His Son, as our redeemer (the one who died to pay for our sins, past present and future, there’s no confusion there, the bible said so) is more liberating than hard work, do you agree?

In my own revelation and marvel, I thought, what’s it gonna hurt? What about you? What’s it gonna hurt of you study God, love Him and seek Him out?  Nothing, except an earthly life of joy, blessings and grace and bigger bonus, an everlasting life after death.  Would you still be afraid to die after knowing that?

This poem was written last night, before my daughter called me to tell me her father is leaving this earth:

Ode to Darren

I looked at the moon tonight and I saw your face

The brightness that lit the darkness of the sky

Reminded me of God’s grace

Somehow I felt you were in the air

The memory of the life of joy we shared,

a moment so fair.

Among the despair a celebration abounds

How lovely for you everlasting life just around

For God is so close pure love is now clear.

If then there was fear, now only strength

If then there was doubt now only hope

And at the end of that hope there is salvation

Gone are they all now only peace.

And when you get there, nothing but smiles

Grandman will meet you up in the skies

Sorrow is ours but won’t be for long

For someday again we will sing our song.