Pain Free

The Lord shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.

Revelation 21: 4

 

As I have known several dear people who, in recent days, have died after battles with painful illness and I do know several more who are living under the oppressive pain and suffering of harsh illnesses or injuries, the thoughts that Christ gave to John in this vision seem truly pertinent for today. Almost everyone knows people who are in these challenging times of life or we have been there ourselves or we are working hard at living through it all today. In this broken and sin plagued world our own bodies will become victims of the universal decay and collapse of a creation that God intended to be perfect and eternal. There is simply no escaping the reality of human frailty and mortality.

 

The pain that people experience during these times is very real, and it is often devastatingly hard to endure both for the sufferer and for those who love and care about that person. Yet, that period of endurance is a mere moment when you contemplate the Lord’s eternity. It is a short journey down a long and brutal road that is very similar to the one that Christ walked on His way to Golgotha and beyond as He secured and sealed our right to freely and totally enter into the presence of God. We are granted a glimpse into those eternal hours when God’s plan for the redemption of humanity and for the restoration of Creation was made complete and was consecrated by Jesus’ blood.

 

It is my belief that in this verse Christ was giving John a picture of the way that this world will be restored when He returns, and I also believe that Christ was providing us with a very hopeful and encouraging look into the new reality that His children experience when they leave this life and enter into their eternal one. Much of the way that we people process and understand life is based upon experience. The things that we have thought and experienced become the overlay and the filter for evaluation and for comprehension of virtually everything we encounter. Christ is telling us that when we enter into His presence we will no longer have the pain and the tears of our human lives as our basis for understanding; thus, there will be no need for mourning. Death no longer holds us in its grasp and it no longer has any control over our existence. In that moment when we leave this life and enter into eternity, we are taken into the presence of Christ who is the author of all joy, peace, and comfort. Then we are dwelling in a home where there is no more sorrow or suffering. Yet, even here and now with life as it is, that future hope is also our reality in Christ as we are dwelling in the presence of our Lord and Savior and within the comfort of His grace and mercy.

 

Resurrection Day

We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Romans 6: 4

 

Everyone experiences death. It is that great inevitable that hovers above each of our lives. We encounter its reminders on an almost daily basis, too. There is no escaping the influence that death with its loss and with its finality has on us and on our world. Yet, for those who truly know God by way of living in a relationship with Christ, death has gained a fuller and a very different emphasis and meaning. In Christ, the finality of the grave is a radically redefined sort of terminus, for Christ brings us together with Him into the presence of God, the Father, in a glorious celebration of our setting aside of the pain and the trials of living in this foreign and hostile land of our temporary wandering. Through Christ we come to our permanent home in the splendid perfection of heaven.

 

But the death that Paul is speaking of here is of a different sort. It is different; yet, it should still lead to just as profound a change and a transition in our lives as does the one that comes at the end of earthly life. This is a death that God calls upon all people to accept. It is also one that only some will dare to believe in and to trust Christ enough in order to surrender into its finality. Christ tells us to deliberately leave our well-established and familiar lives behind as we purposefully climb into the grave of submission to God’s will. As we join Christ in His death, it is His blood that cleanses us from all of the sin that has separated us from God, and it is His intervention before the Father that gains us a verdict of innocent from the only high court that matters.

 

Yet it is the next step that is most significant. Just as the Father pronounced His final victory over sin and over death as He raised Christ out of His tomb, so too we join in that victory. Christ leads us into a new life. This is not just a different lifestyle; rather, it is a life that is lived from a completely redefined perspective. We are made new by and through our relationship with Christ. Although this fact does not diminish the intensity of the struggle that we will encounter during the process of leaving our old, deeply ingrained ways of thinking and of acting behind, now there is hope and a promise of victory. Now Christ enfolds us into His resurrection. In this new life we should expect to walk daily in the company of God’s loving community. As we walk in our newness Christ goes with us into this day, and He uses us to claim His victory over the death that sin tries to bring into our world

 

Strong as Death

Love is as strong as death.

Song of Solomon 8: 6b

 

In the contemplation of death lies some of the greatest fears and concerns that people encounter. This is so as death brings us to the boundary of all that we understand and causes us to look intently into a beyond that is the frontier of faith. There is no other aspect of this life that takes us quite so far out of the realm of experience as does death. It also forces us to consider all that we would have desired to accomplish and who we want to be in the light of what we have actually done and how we are living. Also, God has woven into us a great desire to live that is the spark behind much of the will to fight that propels us forward through the conflicts and the trials that come our way.

 

Yet, it is Christ who brings understanding to this great mystery. It is God’s love that brought Jesus into this world so that the Father’s demand for absolute holiness would be answered and so that the death that sin requires would be absolved. With Christ in me the trepidation of this look forward is resolved into a contemplation of moving from one aspect of the continual presence of absolute love to an infinitely greater one. In this world the glory of Christ is present, but in the next, the glory of God is the expression of everything!

 

Still, in this world, the grim reaper wields his scythe daily and death remains a constantly unyielding companion; so, it is normal to consider our own mortality and that of those that we care about. It is here in this contemplation that love seems to speak most loudly and with a voice that is clear above and beyond the noise of doubt, fear, and pain. It is love that broke through the seemingly impenetrable darkness of evil, and it is the pure love of Christ that has defeated Satan’s illusion of control over life. Love holds us close when the grief of loss fills our hearts, and love illuminates the journey and eases our need to hold onto this world when the death in question is our own.