"At church pot luck dinners, after the main course is served, Pastor, you always tell us to keep our forks for dessert because the best is yet to come. I want people to know that this dying business is not the end, because for me, heaven awaits and truly, the best is yet to come."
I know that to be true for Dad as well. This is not all there is. This life is simply a cloudy shadowing of what is to come.
For Dad, glory awaits. Heaven's glory. Glory with his Lord and Savior. The time for dad to step into eternity is upon us. Why would we try to hold him here?
I read this verse on a recent Monday morning; God speaking directly to my cry to him just the night before!
"We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord."
2 Corinthians 5:8
Dad used to quote that very verse: "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord."
Amen!
I catch my breath with anticipation when I dwell on the fact that in a very short time, my dad will see Jesus face to face! (And family members, the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther--but will those people even matter compared to the Savior?!)You know, all this death and dying business is not the end; it is just the beginning! We talk of babies still in the womb as "pre-born." What dad is experiencing now---morphine, "End of Life" and comfort measures---it's really "pre-living." Heaven will be truly living; this is just the preliminary!
How do I know this to be true? How do I know Dad will be in heaven soon? Simply put from that line in the the children's song: "for the Bible tells me so."
"He who has the Son has life, he who does not have the Son of God does not have life." 1 John 5:12
Dad heard the gospel: that he was a sinner in need of a Savior, that Jesus died on the cross to save Marshall Delano Ferguson, defeating sin and death, and he believed it!
"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." Romans 10:13
Dad listened to and obeyed the Holy Spirit's prompting his heart to leave his seat to walk down the aisle at the little church on a Tennessee dirt road across from his sister Luella's house in the early 1940s. (And he took his little brother with him...!) And that "going forward" didn't save him, it was only an outward sign of what was going on inside, of what he believed in his heart--to turn from his sin and trust Jesus Christ for "I have decided to follow Jesus."
I remember finding slides one day in a box on the bookshelf at the end of my parents' living room. Holding one up to the light, I was surprised to see a young-adult version of my dad surrounded by grade-school aged boys and even more surprised to have my "who is this?" question answered with "that's your dad with the Bible study boys he taught in Japan." How encouraging to know my dad was engaged and involved with living out his faith in those late-teen years!
Dad wasn't perfect. Sometimes he didn't do very well living for Jesus. But as we stand on the threshold of eternity, Dad's faith will become sight very soon. He will soon enter into his rest and reward. Oh how glorious! It is not death, after all, but truly life!
It is not death to die!
