Today we have a guest blogger. Amy Roberts Kinder has Master of Arts in Biblical Studies with a concentration in the Old Testament from Ashland Theological Seminary, and is a graduate of Northpoint Bible College presently located in Haverhill, MA. She is presently She has blessed us with her writing before, which can be read at: https://drandrewsargent.com/2018/01/rules-rules-rules/.
Christians Hope in the Face of Death
“I hope whoever speaks at this funeral doesn’t get preachy and try to get a bunch of people saved. I hate when preachers do that at funerals. I don’t get it, it’s just annoying,” says the rather confused woman to me at my Mother and Father-in-Law’s funeral. Yes, both of my beloved in-laws passed away 3 days apart and we laid them to rest on February 14, 2020. Little did this woman know that I was that annoying preacher who would give the eulogy and call people to faith in Christ.
Why would I do that? Isn’t it a put off… and off point? We are there to honor the lives of two dearly departed, isn’t an “altar call” a distraction? Disrespectful?
Had she asked, I might have explained. I do this because nothing awakens us to eternity than a confrontation with death, and Christians prepare for eternity.
Our family has faced more than our fair share of loss. In one year, my husband and I attended 16 funerals of family, friends and loved ones. That was the year that our only dates nights were funerals. And the losses continued, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends. I have been awakened by an hysterical phone call that my aunt, a sister to me, was found dead on her bathroom floor. I have lain next to my grandmother hours before she passed. My uncle died in his sleep from unknown causes, which rocked our world with the fear that any one of us might simply never wake up. I have made final arrangements and put together celebration of life videos because other family members were just too shattered to help. So many eulogies.
More times than I can count, we have sat with those for whom the veil between the realms was paper-thin and watched them take their last breaths. One grandfather greeted his parents who had come for him, another talked with Jesus. He asked again and again to go home. When asked which home, he said, “I want to go home to be with Jesus.” A little later I asked him, “What will you do first when you go home?” Expecting, “See my wife Roxie,” I got, “I’m gonna praise God, praise God, praise God.”
Every time we face another funeral, we do so knowing that there is more to this life than our years here on Earth. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that death is not God’s design for us. Indeed, most have a powerful sense that there is something wrong with the world, that death is not the plan, that there must be something else. Nothing makes us think more about what that could be than touching death.
Most people shy away from death and grieving. We want happy thoughts. It is uncomfortable to sit with the grieving; there is nothing we can say to help, nothing we can do to fix things. The grieving feel stuck in loss; the rest of the world goes on, but we can scarce imagine how to go on with it. So people distract themselves from uncomfortable emotions. They throw parties, play music, watch TV, work harder and longer, turn to substances to make us forget.
Ecclesiastes warns us about avoidance. It is better to go to a funeral than a party. People at funerals know that they will die and fix their soul on the reality of their future. Those who go to parties forget what’s coming, and fail to prepare their souls. So 7:6 says, “For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fools,” but 7:2 knows, “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.”
Christians know that death is not the end for us, if it were, Jesus, who went there, suffered that, and came back with the T-Shirt, would have told us. We trust God as the judge of all humanity to do right by our lost loved ones, and we hold onto Paul’s promise in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14, “Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”
As we face death ourselves, we celebrate the example of Paul, who, sitting in prison, writes in Philippians 1:20-24 to tell believers, “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”
Ok – let’s stop here – to die is gain? How can death be gain?
I’m glad you asked! Christians live with conviction that when we die we will go to Christ where there is no more striving, and no need of “faith” for we shall know Him face to face.
Paul goes on to describe his longing in Philippians 1:22 saying, “If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.”
For the Christian, when life is good or bad we have hope; when life as we know it ceases, we will be with Christ, and that is far better than any life we might live here on Earth. Here, now, we work for the Lord and waiting expectantly for the day He calls us to our true home with Him.
Just as my grandfather looking through the veil between the worlds knew which home he was going to, all of us who know Jesus as our savior are never truly alone whether here in the present or even in death. May we rejoice in the Lord always, in life, in death, and in everything in between.
~Amy Roberts Kinder, MA
