Thinking on Eternity

As we speak my DH is conducting a memorial service. He didn't want to do it -- this is a really tough one, a suicide. But funerals aren't for the sake of the dead.  They are for those who are living on without their loved one. The woman (not someone we knew) hung herself, which, in my mind, has got to be one of the worst ways to die. In the old days, the condemned had his head put into the noose, and then he was suddenly dropped a good distance, enough to break his neck.  But someone who puts a belt around her neck and swings away from a chair must be absolutely tortured for several minutes, both in her body and in her mind.  I know, this is really morbid.  But I can't help thinking about this poor woman, who, if she never gave Jesus Christ any of her time before this, must have been desperately begging God for her life in her last moments. I hope she realized that he was her only hope for eternity. I hope someone in her life loved her enough to tell her before this how to be saved from her sins, and I hope she remembered that while she was on her way out.

My older daughters, Alizona and Booklover, are providing the music for the memorial service. I didn't want them to have to be there. This is one of those ugly things I wanted them to be protected from forever. The spirit of grief is so heavy at something like this.  I know if it were I playing the piano, I wouldn't be able to see the music for the tears. I have been praying for all three of them, the girls and my DH, all morning, as well as for the woman's husband and for the others who are attending the service. Could something good come from all this?  Could someone there realize their own need for peace with God?  That is also my prayer.

In our own home the whole situation has opened up some opportunities to talk with the little girls about death. "Mommy, is a rock dead?  How about a flower? Is a waffle dead?"  What makes a body alive?  And how can our souls have life? Oh, our souls live on forever.  It is the spirit that dies in sin and needs to be born again. The soul without a living spirit goes down to hell when the body dies, and "lives" there suffering and perishing, for eternity.  The soul that has been redeemed, bought back from the dead by the blood of Jesus, has been given eternal life.  In the OT, those who believed God sacrificed animals for blood to cover their sins. But when the Messiah came, the Prince of Peace, he was the last sacrifice for sins. His blood no longer only covered sins; it actually took them away.  Praise God, when Jesus Christ willingly went to the cross, he shed the last blood God would ever need. The blood of atonement.  It is finished.  Jesus paid it all. What peace I have in my heart, knowing without a doubt that my sins are paid for. No matter how bad things could get in this temporal life, I know I have peace with God through the blood of the cross. Do you? It is my prayer that someone at that service will receive this peace today.