Praise the Lord. This is a brand new day in His Kingdom. He gave us a
balmy, beautiful, and brilliant day. Yesterday I attended a service of death
and resurrection for a young woman who was my neighbor for last 23 years. She
was a graduate of a local high School and had graduated from a Christian
University. She died in her sleep. She was 23 years old. The church was
filled with people of all ages. The service lasted for two and a half hours.
This young woman was born and raised in a beautiful Christian home. I was
blessed to be in the service yesterday. It was heart wrenching to see the
sudden and unexpected death of this beautiful young woman of 23 years. The
grief and loss is massive and beyond description. We do not have a simplistic
answer to the question of why young people with so much promise and potential
and possibility die so young. In the midst of and in the face of trials,
tragedies, and tears we lean on Jesus, who is the Resurrection and the
Life.
Many people from
out of state traveled for the service. Her school teachers attended the
service. The chancellor of the university wrote about her in his blog on the
University Web Page. This young woman loved the Lord and served Him faithfully
and joyfully. She loved people with great passion and affection. Over 40
people testified during the service how she touched their lives and how she
reached out to the last, the least, and the lost, both rich and poor. She had
gone on three mission trips to Africa and several mission trips within the
United States. She was a Christian Camp counselor. She was an avid
participant in High School and University life. She was a joyful singer and
servant of Jesus. She had lived a very full life in the short 23 year span of
her life. She was a fearless and courageous disciple of Jesus. I came home
resolved to serve Christ Joyfully and faithfully,
As I write this I
am thinking of three of godly men - Christ like men. One lives Pennsylvania.
One lives in California, and one lives in Vermont. Each of them loves Jesus.
They are facing death with great courage and with blessed hope and assurance
because of their faith and trust in Jesus our
Lord. In
the face of trials, in the midst of massive grief, Jesus our Savior who is the
Lord of Joy does grant His Joy. While attending the service of death and
Resurrection of the beautiful young woman I sensed " Joy"
unspeakable.
G. K. Chesterton
called joy “the gigantic secret of the Christian life.” Joy, he said, is always
at the center for the Christian; trials are at the periphery of life. Joy is
the ability to face reality—the good and bad, the happy and the sad, the
positive and the negative, the best and the worst—because we are satisfied with
Jesus. In I Peter we read about suffering, endurance, and joy.
Peter began his epistle by assuring his readers that their trials would only
last “a little while.” Of course, that “little while” seems to last forever
when we are in the furnace.
A wise pastor
friend of mine wrote recently to say that his responsibility is not just to help
people live well but to help them live with the great expectancy of heaven. “It
is to prepare them to die well, even with excitement toward heaven and not
regret.” Our hard times are not easy and sometimes they are
not good at all, but God can use them for our good and for his glory . He
intends to “prove” our faith genuine by the way we respond to our trials.
It is
always joy and trials, at the same time, working together, mixed together, so
that we have joy in our trials, joy beside our trials, joy within our trials,
and sometimes even joy in spite of our trials. Thus could David say in
Psalm
34:8,
after mentioning his fears and his troubles, “Taste and see that the Lord is
good.” Indeed, his mercies endure forever, but most of us only discover that
truth when we are in the furnace. Like the three Hebrew children of Daniel 3,
when we are cast into the furnace we suddenly discover “the fourth man” is there
with us. Jesus comes to us in our time of direst need, and just when we need
him most, he is there.
On April 5, 1943,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo for his
resistance to the Nazi regime in Germany. For several years he had spoken out
against the Nazis, and eventually it caught up with him. As he saw his country
sliding into the abyss, he felt that he could not remain silent. Two years
later, only a few weeks from the end of World War II, he found himself in
Buchenwald Concentration Camp, facing the death sentence. On Sunday, April 8,
he led a service for other prisoners. Shortly after the final prayer, the door
opened and two civilians entered. “Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us,” they
said. Everyone knew what that meant—the gallows. Quickly the other men said
goodbye to him. An English prisoner who survived the war describes the moment:
“He took me aside [and said], ‘This is the end; but for me it is the beginning
of life.’” The next day he was hanged at Flossenburg Prison. The SS doctor who
witnessed his death called him brave and composed and devout to the very end.
“Through the half-open door I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer still in his prison clothes,
kneeling in fervent prayer to the Lord his God. The devotion and evident
conviction of being heard that I saw in the prayer of this intensely captivating
man moved me to the depths.”
“This is the end; but for me it is the beginning of life.” Surely such a man has discovered the “living hope” that goes beyond the grave. What a way to live! What a way to die! What way to live again for and in Eternity! In Christ,
Brown
http://youtu.be/ZIUCRXMM4pE
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