The Hope of Heaven in the Presence of Death
My father-in-law suffered a fatal heart attack on the evening of January 6, 2016, outside Tampa, Florida. He was on vacation with my mother-in-law. The next morning, I had to find the words to tell my three- and four-year-old sons the bad news.
I struggled to figure out how to fit such sadness into the small box of language and experience of little children, but I gathered them together anyway and tried to find the words to tell them.
They didn't remember the tears in our eyes from the night before. They didn't know why my sister came over to play with them until bedtime as their mom and I withdrew together. Instead, they thought good news of a fun-filled day was coming. I wished that was it, but that day had to wait. Death had approached our doorstep, crashing its way from Florida with the speed of a trembling voice on the other end of the telephone. Their Pops was gone.
Death comes like a thief. You’re never prepared, and it always takes more than you thought it could. It is jolting, stunning, unbelievable, unnatural.
We were not made for it, but it has its way with us all. The pain rips through like a summer storm, fast and mighty, but lingers like winter snowfall, long and deep. And when the funeral is over, we have to find a way to keep on living. But how?
HOW TO KEEP ON LIVING
Death changes things. It changes more than removing the presence of someone. It changes cars, porches, beds, tables, homes. Suddenly, everything seems lost.
A house once filled with laughter and love becomes a place of sobs and sorrow. The atmosphere is altered. The dent in the couch begins its long recovery to the normal shape. The hallway screams with absence. The porch weeps with the wind on a warm summer night as the chimes play their desolate song.
The car parked in the driveway needs to be sold, but not yet. The tools in the shop must be parted with, but not yet. The clothes in the closet hold tight to the scent of the departed. Pictures hanging on the wall, sitting on nightstands and dressers, stuck to the refrigerator by magnets—they all remind us of the life that once was and will never be again. We long for just one more normal day.
“We can’t go back because the thing that death changes the most is us.”
Death turns joy into despair, peace into rage, fullness into emptiness. It takes without asking and promises no hope of return. We can’t go back because the thing that death changes the most is us.
Something has been lost. But if we’re open to God, something more can be gained. One day we too will leave and things will change. It’s a good thing we have a God who, when we can’t change the reality of death, changed death for us (1 Thess. 4:13; Rom. 6:5). He reversed the curse and reordered the universe.
Death changes things, but not nearly as much as life (Jn. 11:25).
WHEN JESUS RESTARTS EVERYTHING
My boys were close to my father-in-law. He was a part of their weekly lives. He went to church with us. He played hide and seek with the boys every Tuesday night, sat them in his lap as they ate their ice-cream sandwiches, and brought my oldest a peppermint every time he saw him. Those special bonds were severed without warning, without preparation, and without apology. And it was awful.
But my father-in-law was also a Christian. Because he knew Christ, when he died he was ushered into the presence of God (Lk. 23:43). He had departed from us, that’s true, but his heart would never fail him again. He is with God and soon he will receive his resurrection body (Jn. 5:28–29; 1 Cor. 15:52). The day is coming, as my four-year-old said, when Jesus will "restart everything" (Rev. 21:5).
“The day is coming, as my four-year-old said, when Jesus will “restart everything.””
Through tears that January morning, I had the good news of the resurrection to point my two boys to (1 Thess. 4:13). And that good news is not merely the hope of future life. The good news is the fact that Jesus is there to make our future life the kind of life where death and evil and sickness and pain cannot live.
The good news of the resurrection is good news because it is the restoration of all this sin-stained world has ruined. Jesus is making all things new, even new hearts in old Pops, and what is raised is imperishable (1 Cor. 15:42). And what is raised in Christ will live with him forever, beholding God for eternity (Jn. 3:16; 1 Jn. 3:2).
My boys could not understand the full impact of death. They understood life much better. After all, we serve a God of the living, not of the dead (Mk. 12:25–27). They can understand the future life of their Pops because of Christ, even if they can’t understand his present absence.
DEATH’S DEATH DAY
In the face of death’s finality, we need a hope that reaches beyond. We need a power more powerful. We need a life that swallows it up (Is. 25:8).
What if death has a death day just as it had a birthday in the Garden of Eden? What if there is light at the end of the tunnel? What if that light came into the world (Jn. 8:12–30)? What if that light overcame the darkness? Even better, what if we had proof?
Jesus is the light at the end of the tunnel (Jn. 1:5). Not only that, he is the light that illuminates the path of life (Jn. 1:9). He is the light that we can enter into because he came down into our darkness. He walked in the shadow of the valley of death (Ps. 23:4). He let his body be broken, his side be pierced, and his lifeblood flow into death to defeat death for us (Jn. 19).
“He let his body be broken, his side be pierced, and his lifeblood flow into death to defeat death for us.”
Jesus is the life that defeats death.
On Resurrection Day, he proved his victory (1 Cor. 15:55–57). He lived. He died. He lived again. Now, death, what can you do to a man like that? Furthermore, what can you do to his brothers and sisters? Life runs in the family.
So, death, where is your sting? Where is your great boast? Where is your victory? Where is your championship trophy? Where is your hall of fame? Where is your pride? Ten billion years from now, when those in Christ are partying in heaven with him forever, we will laugh at you as you have laughed at us. We may have born you into the world but Jesus has taken you out.
There is a new, greater reality in town. His name is Jesus. His presence is life (Jn. 14:23).
PLEASURES FOREVERMORE
Death’s day is coming (Rom. 6:5–10). In just a little while, if my boys come to faith in Christ, they will see their Pops again. Perhaps they will share an ice cream sandwich in some big leather chair in the new world. The Good News himself will join them and tell them of all the little things he was doing in their lives in those hard days, as he worked for their good and for his glory (Rom. 8:28; Rev. 21:3). In a way only God can orchestrate, perhaps even their experience of heaven will be enhanced because early on in life, they began to look forward to it.
I don’t know all that they feel when they see Granny come into the house alone, or see an old picture of him in a party hat, or play with a handmade toy he gave them one Christmas. Maybe it speaks to them of the brokenness of the world. Maybe heaven whispers hope into their little minds. Perhaps Jesus himself comforts them in ways I can't see (Matthew 5:4).
I pray it creates in them a longing for a better world with a God who saves them from everything bad and gives them back all the joy in his heart—the joy at his right hand, with pleasures forevermore (Ps. 16:11).
David McLemore is an elder at Refuge Church in Franklin, Tennessee. He also works for a large healthcare corporation where he manages an application development department. He is married to Sarah, and they have three sons. Read more of David’s writing on his blog, Things of the Sort.