On his birthday... Still living with grief, still walking in grace

When we heard that Sam was dead, I immediately felt that my life was over. Very soon I was overcome with the idea that all of our efforts at raising him to be a man, and especially to be a godly man, had come to nothing; that they were wasted.

I turned to God, nonetheless, and found comfort in worship and in reading the Bible. I began to have new thoughts that were more hopeful based on the encouragement of trusted friends, the things I was finding in the Bible, and my own meditations. I remember thinking that we here are in Christ, and that Sam is also in Christ, so that we might not be that far away from each other, since we are all in Christ; we on this side of a divide, and he on another.

Within a few days of Sam’s death, I had a great desire to look carefully at the Bible concerning those matters that were related to his situation at the end of his life, and especially things concerning his experiences beyond his death. I remember thinking about how someone, like Moses, might face some discipline from God that could even lead to the end of his life, and yet still be saved for the life to come. Moses was not permitted to go into the Promised Land, and it was because of something he did. His life here was eventually brought to an end, but he certainly was kept by God for a better place, since he was with Jesus at the Transfiguration. This idea of earthly judgment followed by heavenly blessing was a new idea, and it was very comforting to me.

For the first six months I just wrote prayers as I listened to the Bible. During the following six months I wrote a meditation addressed to God on life and death, and heaven and earth, as I listened to the Bible a second time. In the meantime, Candy was reading and studying about grief, and then about heaven, and we were talking with each other about these things, and loving each other through our loss.

In my thinking about the Christian faith, I already knew what the most honored confessions from the history of the church said about these things. When believers die, our bodies rest in the grave, and our souls, now perfected in holiness, go to be with the Lord in the present heaven. When Christ returns, our bodies are resurrected to an immortal condition and are reunited with our perfected souls, and we live with the Lord forever.

Though I knew this before, and though I believed it and taught it, this all became more immediate and personal to me, because I was undone by the loss of Sam. This was of critical importance to me, and I thought about it all the time. I wanted to see this teaching in the words of the Bible itself, and so I listened to the Bible and wrote what I found to be the story of heaven and earth; the story of life now and of the life to come; the story as it is revealed through the Scriptures.

This is what I learned.

God created heaven and earth to be together. Sin destroyed that. The whole Bible is about God bringing heaven and earth back together again forever. There are many things about life on earth now that are very difficult, and in a way, this is how it is supposed to be at the moment. There are also many opportunities here for faith, hope, and love. That must be why we are still here. What we think and do now matters; and God, His angels, and His people in heaven pay attention to what we do below. When we die in the Lord we go to their side of the divide, to an existence in the present heavens that is far better than our current life, and much fuller in every way than I had ever imagined. When Jesus returns, He brings that fullness of heaven down to earth, and heaven and earth are together again in the most wonderful way forever.

What about life here now?

After the separation of heaven and earth, the story of true religion on earth is a story of being in relationship with God in the ways that He reveals and allows. God gave His people of old special places of His presence that were like borderlands to heaven. These places have always been full of danger: the Land of Israel, the Tabernacle, and later, the Temple, and especially the Holy of Holies within the Temple. The worship of the church in Christ is our special place today, and it is superior to all the old ways, but it is still dangerous.

The old ways were important symbols during the time of preparation for the coming of our Savior. But it has always been the case that it is through Jesus Christ alone that the problem between heaven and earth could be solved. Our Lord has done this. He demonstrated the Kingdom of heaven to us in His miracles, and He taught us about it with His words, but He especially displayed it in His resurrection. He is the proof of what He has promised to us in the resurrection of the dead. We need to live for Him and labor in Him; and we are encouraged by the announcement to us that our service of loving Him and each other is not a waste. Every good thing that we could do in the name of the Lord must have some resurrection reality connected to it, since we are told that these things are not in vain. Even something as simple as giving a cup of cold water to a little child in Jesus’ Name makes a difference in the Kingdom of heaven.

This does not take away our grief, but it does purify it with a certain kind of happiness that often eludes me. Sam is in a place now that is far better than here. We will be there in due time too. I need to keep my mind focused on that heavenly life, and I need to live the daily life that I have here with a quiet, faithful, and loving confidence that Christ has conquered sin, death, and the grave, and that those who are with Him now in the present heavens know His complete victory in a land where there is no doubt.

I have been humbled by these events, and I am hurt. But I know that even this is for my good and for God’s glory, so I need to accept it, and eventually embrace it.

There is another thing that I have learned. I was wrong. My life is not over. My efforts at loving my son were not a waste. He has gone above. We are still below. He could teach better lessons now about heaven than Candy and I can. We are ready to learn many good things from Sam when we meet him again in Christ above. Until that day, we are in Christ even now, somehow we are actually said to be in Christ in the heavens already, and Christ is still the brightest jewel of heaven, whether we live on this side of the present divide, or on the other.