Comfort One Another

“Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore comfort one another with these words."                                        1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

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     There are three main observations in this section of Scripture:

• Death brings grief.
• Because Christ rose, Death does not have the final word. 
• Comfort one another with the hope of the final Resurrection.

    The fact that death brings grief is really not earth-shattering. People have always grieved death. But I appreciate how the Bible does not look away from real life. There is no avoidance here. Life is sometimes very hard, and it does us no good to look away. There is something about entering into even the most painful emotions and events that is important in a road to recovery.

Crying Yet Again

I woke crying early this morning. Again.

I awoke from a dream in which I had been talking with my mom.  In my dream, I turned and looked to the side and there was my Dad, just sitting next to me, looking at me and smiling slightly as if he were still alive and close. 

This was not like the dreams I have written about before where the veil between this world and the next seemed temporarily lifted so that I could have those final conversations with my father.  This was in many ways just an ordinary, bizarre dream:  I think I was in a desert, riding on a ski lift of up side of a mountain. 

Unlike those dreams that followed his burial so closely, I didn’t even try to talk with dad. I've had ten years to figure out that he is gone. I get it.  I sobbed while I talked to my mom steadily, knowing dad wasn’t there, and that he wasn’t real, and that I couldn’t talk to him, and that my life had to carry on in the worlds of both the sleeping and awake.  So glad to see him yet again, and so sad knowing it was for but a moment.

I didn’t look away until he disappeared from his desert ski lift seat, dissolving into distant memories as easily as he had appeared. I knew he would go, and that I would have to wake up, but it still broke my heart from start to finish. I never tried to touch him or talk to him.  I just...remembered him more poignantly than I usually do, and that was enough.  It had to be.

That’s why I woke up crying early this morning.

Someday, when I truly wake up, all the best dreams will be real. Comfort one another with these words.