MUSIC BLOG

September 19, 2024

From Here to Eternity

God gives us seasons of death.  Solomon reminds us that in everything there is a season.  It seems that my season right now is death.  Let me explain.  Two days before we were to leave on vacation, a dear, dear friend and choir member passed away.  The funeral was scheduled at a time when I would have been gone.  This was a funeral I could not and did not wish to miss.  I made other arrangements and sent Ronda on ahead to spend time with her parents, I led my part of the funeral and joined her.  A season of death changes our plans. Ronda’s father has cancer in addition to his late-stage Alzheimer's disease.  The attending doctor and hospice nurse expected him to pass away the last week of April, it is now the last week of September. As a result Ronda and I have had several opportunities to spend more precious moments with her dad. A season of death changes our priorities.  This week a beloved church member passed away.  His funeral is Sunday afternoon.  He was attacked by a terrorist behind a wheel 20 years ago.  God saved his life then and allowed him 20 more years to change the world.  Gary was faithful to do his part from the wheelchair he never left. God acknowledged that Gary had finished the course, run the race, and was faithful to the end.  Gary passed from this life to glory on Tuesday morning.  A season of death changes our purpose. 

I was not aware of how these deaths or anticipated deaths have affected me until today.  We had our Senior Adult meeting, with me providing lunch and a presentation by our city Fire Department on home safety.  When I saw that lunch was ready and I still had 15 minutes to spare, I ran down the hall to my office to print copies of our upcoming events and a quick and easy devotion from the internet.  As I entered the fellowship hall, there was a room full of seniors ready for a great meeting and a wonderful time of food and fellowship.  I gave them a reading of the upcoming events and started reading the short devotion I printed below.  As I read, I looked into the eyes of my friends who have lost, husbands, wives, children, friends: family.  Several times in the reading I had to stop and try to compose myself.  It wasn’t like I was preaching to the choir, because every face every eye, everyone, needed to hear this word today. 

Dear reminds us that this is not the end.  Death reminds us that each one us of experiences hurt. Death reminds us how precious these moments are and how quickly they can be taken away.  Death also alludes to the promised future that we have in Jesus Christ.  What a wonderful, glorious future that will be.  Please take a moment and read this devotional thought.

How to Focus on Eternity

Pete Briscoe

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see. —Helen Keller

Imagine, again, that you are back in the office of the Great Physician. God’s diagnosis of death and decay has left you stunned; your soul is reeling with that reality. But now He’s leaning towards you. He’s taking you by the hand and He’s lifting your chin and looking you in the eyes—He has something to say:

“My child, the death, the pain, the decay… it is all temporary—an immeasurably small moment in light of the eternity that awaits you. What lies beyond is incomparable. The asthma, the cancer, the bruises, scabs, and scars … these will not last. Trust Me. Look to the future and see with the eyes of faith a heavenly, timeless, and painless existence—an existence of an entirely different kind, a body of an entirely different kind. Be patient, My child; have faith. For with a flash of light, you will be changed.”

I’m not making this up. God has written it down for us in His Word:

The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body… in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. (1 Corinthians 15:41-44, 52)

Yes, our physical bodies will decay, die, and decompose, but we will be resurrected, and our spiritual bodies will have an imperishable glory and power. Your body will be different. Not just healed and not just better… it will be radically different.

The Great Physician is finished talking for the moment. God pushes back and gives you a moment to let this soak in. Are you thinking about it, I mean really thinking about it? Do you see the big picture now?

God, I know that this day will be filled with decay and death, but focus my heart on the full diagnosis! Make this future reality a practical truth today. Amen.

If you are like me, your day just got better, and your burden was lifted.

Blessings,

Marty