It’s Christ the King Sunday Eve and my dear friend’s father is passing into the Kingdom of Light.
My heart aches for her, as he was a godly man and much given to loving those around him.
Her heart weeps even as she knows he will be reunited with his beloved wife. She reflects also on the grandchildren who will not know him as she did, and on the siblings who will finish out life needing now –as mature adults– to become that which they’ve heretofore enjoyed themselves.
He leaves a legacy, not of perfect character, but of passionate pursuit of a beloved Saviour, and the echoes of Christ’s nature which overflowed from his flawed and failing flesh into the thirsty lives of those who looked to him as patriarch.
I prayed with him last night, in the wee hours of the morning, from 27 hours away but with him. I wonder did his spirit sense mine, as I his? He has known for some weeks that this was coming, I think, and worried – little though he needed – for his daughter is the personification of loyalty. She of divided heart: rooted there and longing thisway.
I want to bring this reflection to resolution but death does not allow, for it suspends our relating for a time, and prevents the flow of life to life till the Lord of Life shall return to unite all things in Himself – things and people – in heaven and on earth.
But in Him and in this father of blessed memory my friend has obtained an inheritance, which shall work in her till they meet again, so that all she hopes for and anticipates and all that has gone before shall be to the praise of Messiah’s glory. For she and he are sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it… and her father is closer than we to He in whom we live and move and have our being.
Soli Deo gloria.
Long-ing For Life 