"death itself is a music"

“Death…is Satan’s great weapon and also God’s great weapon:  it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which He conquered.”  C.S. Lewis

There has been a lot of death around us this year.   A couple of weeks ago I had to eulogize my dear Aunt Martha and her son, Johnny.  It is hard to do that without shedding tears.  It is hard to see the hands of God as benevolent when your family and the world have experienced so much loss.

On the other hand, it is in the midst of so much loss, that you FALL into the hands of God, and there is a vision available to see and feel how benevolent God is in a way you have never experienced before.  Because each death, particularly of one we love deeply, opens heaven’s door a little wider, allowing us to see what awaits us, and it is this:  PERFECT FREEDOM.

Freedom from pain, deteriorating bodies, discouraged and broken-hearted spirits. 

Freedom from worry and anxiety and depression.

Freedom from loneliness—we enter into a cloud of witnesses. 

Freedom from the isolation of sin—we enter into the glorious company of God’s love dance, the Trinity, the communion of saints.

Death is setting us free.  Those of us left behind may weep for a day or for the rest of our lives, but at the threshold of heaven, the weeping stops.  Jesus is there, our loved ones are there, whole and happy, and we are with them once again.

As poet Mary Oliver wrote, “Death itself is a music.”

Love, Liz 

“There are heights of joy that I may not reach till I rest in peace with thee.”  Fanny Crosby