Do you remember the first time death forced you to say the final goodbye to a loved one? At the funeral you heard words like departed, passed on, gone ahead. These were unfamiliar terms. You wondered, ‘Departed to where? Passed on to what? Gone ahead for how long?’ When someone dies after a full life, the loss is a little easier to accept. But what if they die as a result of violence? Or after a long battle with illness? It can feel like your plans and hopes for the future are lost too. But Paul wrote: ‘I want you to know what happens to a Christian when he dies so that when it happens, you will not be full of sorrow, as those are who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and then came back to life again, we can also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him all the Christians who have died’ (vv.13-14 TLB). Those words can turn our hopeless sorrow into hope-filled sorrow because they assure us that we will see our loved ones again. Isn’t that what we want to believe? We long to know our loved ones are safe in death. We’re desperate for the reassurance that the soul goes instantly to be with God. But can we dare to believe it? According to the Scriptures, yes, we can believe it confidently! At death a Christian immediately enters the presence of God and delights in conscious fellowship with the Father and with others who have gone before. These words on a believer’s gravestone say it all: ‘The parting is for a moment, but the meeting will be for eternity.’
