How do you say goodbye? I don't mean like when you move far away or travel across the world. I am pretty good at saying that kind of goodbye. These last few days have been surrounded by thoughts of death. On Friday I was told that my step mother's father had some serious medical issues that was most likely cancer. On Saturday a dear friend asked us to pray for her uncle who is only 25 and has prostate cancer. That night she got the call that he had died. Today my father told me that the surgeon that Grampy's problem is inoperable. People who have similar issues general live for three weeks to three months more.
I just sat down and wrote a letter to my Grampy and Grammy and it was hard. How do you say goodbye? I don't really know how but God gave me some things to write. It was hard because I don't think I think the same thing about death as others.
I believe that God's timing and plans are perfect. I believe that death on earth means life in heaven. I believe that absence from the body is presence with God.
I believe Paul's writing in I Thessalonians 4:13-18
"But I would not have be ignorant, brothers, concerning them who are asleep, that you sorrow not, even as others have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also who sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not precede them who are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore, comfort one another with these words."
I believe what Paul says in Philippians 1:21
"For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain"
I don't know if I would have the same convictions in the face of my own coming death but I believe that I would. The pain involved in dying is kind of scary but the moment that I am present with God will make all of life worth it.
I think of the Chris Tomlin song "How Can I Keep From Singing" the line, "I will sing with my last breath sing for I know that I will sing with angels and the saints around the throne"
But how do I say that same thing to someone on the cusps of death. How do say these things without sounding insincere or naive or strange?
My God is amazing. He makes the hard things easy and comforts us in the times that feel like they may crush us.
*Update: Last night, Monday the 1st, my grandfather walked through the pearly gates healed and whole around 10:30.
