The Twenty-first Day of Advent

The Twenty-first Day of Advent, 2017

Saturday, December 23, 2017

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

John 11:25-26

May I take a little liberty here and speak very, very personally? I tell little stories here and there when I write and I want to do that now. As you read, please don’t be sad. I want to talk about Wallace. (For those of you who may not know, Wallace is my husband of 56 years who died in May last year.) So many things in the Bible mean more to me now that he is not here with me – like the resurrection of the body.

We had some great years together, and some of the things we did either reduce me to tears or excite me as I remember. One of those is sunsets. He loved the sunsets – especially here in Florida. Sometimes we would go down to Spring Hill and out to the little beach there just to watch the sunsets. Sometimes we pulled off the road on US Highway 19 and watched as the sun disappeared in a blaze of color over the western horizon. One day, as I was enjoying a sunset alone, I wanted so badly to share it with Wallace. Then God put a thought in my mind, “The colors are far more beautiful to him now than to you, for he doesn’t see them filtered through the earth’s atmosphere and pollution.” That was a precious moment of deep, deep awareness that my Wallace now enjoys a “resurrected” body with all its benefits. His sight is not impaired by a polluted and broken world!

Another time I was thinking about life in general. I actually said out loud to God, “I wish I could share this very good part of life with Wallace right now.” And almost immediately God reminded me that Wallace is much more alive than I am! He’s eternally alive – no temporal life for him anymore. He walks in the light of Almighty God of the Lord, who is Light!

Oh, I have believed in the resurrection of the body for many, many years! But now I think I understand it a little better than I did before. Jesus is resurrection and life! We anticipate it now, but someday we will know it personally as Wallace now does – absent from this earthly body, he is at home with the Lord in an indestructible, resurrected body! I can hardly wait!

Father, thank you for using even painful things in our lives to teach us the truth. Thank you that you are the resurrection and the life. Thank you that you have made provision for us to be with you in eternity. Help us to live in such a way that we can anticipate with joy seeing you not as a Christmas infant but as our glorious risen Lord. Amen. 

The Light of the World
prepared for Homosassa United Methodist Church, 2008,
by Patience Nave, Christian Education Coordinator.