Where Are They Now? Day Thirty
the heart of Biblical Greats
October 30th, 2021
The Taste of Grief
James 1:2-4, ‘My fellow believers, when it seems as though you are facing nothing but difficulties, see it as an invaluable opportunity to experience the greatest joy you can! For you know that when your faith is tested it stirs up power within you to endure all things. And then as your endurance grows even stronger it will release perfection into every part of your being until there is nothing missing and nothing lacking.’ (TPT)
I wanted to tell you about my dad—a tiny man with a giant of a God inside of him Whom he served until his last breath—and where he is now. I shared with you earlier this month that my dad was escorted home to Jesus as October tenth crawled into the eleventh. I say that he was escorted because, as the paramedics worked to revive him a final time, his eyes glanced toward the corner of the room and took on a faraway gaze, as if he had been waiting and watching and suddenly saw angels coming to accompany him on the final leg of his journey. He would be pronounced a short time later.
I apologize for my absence, and so appreciate the time I have been given to rehab. My dad became almost everything to me the last couple years as I cared for his needs and diminishing health and stature. So, his passing, although expected, has met me at the door like an unwanted, surprise guest. I was not prepared for the journey ahead that now does not include my dad, nor was I ready to let him go. But we don’t have a say in the breaths that belong to someone else any more than we have in our own. I am an inexperienced visitor in the waiting room of death and have not understood the brokenness like glass shredding my insides, nor the final bitter taste of good-bye on my tongue. Grief is like hot wax poured from a candle, incandescent and melted, flowing briefly like lava all around me until it hardens. At once, its like having been dipped in a mold, impenetrable and impervious.
But this anguish is my expedition as my father’s pilgrimage is now over. He reached the destination toward which he had been migrating for almost a century. I may have found myself at the corner of Desolate and Disheartened, but his path passed through a gate and collided with forever as he is welcomed home by a Holy God. I know where my dad is now; there isn’t a doubt in my mind…thus causing me to finally comprehend what bittersweet really tastes like.
My dad was a spiritual giant not only to me but to many, and his memorial was one of the sweetest, most kind remembrances that I think anyone has ever been given. He was honored in death just as he was in life, and as they closed the service with an unprecedented Color Guard Ceremony and the trumpet belted out TAPS for his End of Duty, I realized nothing else in life matters nor remains except for the legacy one leaves behind. Not a teacup in the cupboard, not a car in the garage, not the amount of one’s worth, or the size of one’s home. On that day, that final day, what truly matters, is the uttering of the words on the lips of those who remain behind, their remembrances of what was spoken into their lives by this person. That’s what endures and cannot be destroyed by life, overtaken by storm, eaten by moth, rusted by time.
And what lies ahead? For us, left behind until our time comes and we are each called home, there are snatches of happiness as life marches onward. I also drown, immersed in pools of pain that I know will someday be replaced by peace and a depth of joy not understandable by this world. We have been changed by the person in our life who is no longer here in the flesh, yet I am certain the memory never fades when the intensity of love was so profound.
For my dad, what lies ahead? Perfection. He endured with strength to the very end so perfection could be released into his being, as he finally achieved his great reward of nothing missing, nothing lacking, for which he so often longed. And the ultimate. The words of His Father as he entered Glory, more powerful and priceless, than even the utterings on the tips of our tongues, “Well done, My good and faithful Servant. Welcome Home.”
John 3:16-17, ‘”For here is the way God loved the world—He gave His only, unique Son as a gift. So now everyone who believes in Him will never perish but experience everlasting life. God did not send His Son into the world to judge and condemn the world, but to be its Savior and rescue it!”’ (TPT)
