Our Eternal Hope in Christ and Our Emotion on Earth

Good morning!

Greetings in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

 

 

Today, there was a memorial service for my dear friend, Gerritt in Christ.  We all thought that he would have many more years in Haiti while serving the Lord as a missionary to orphans and young people in Haiti.  Instead, he was suddenly called by God, and he returned to our Eternal Home.   In the last summer, he and his wife visited us at our church to talk about his missionary work in Haiti.  Nobody knew it was his last trip to our church.  Soon after returning to Haiti, he had to come back to his home town to treat his sickness.   Nobody knew at that time that he was at his final stage of cancer because the cancerous symptom was not apparent.  Then only a few months was allowed for him to be with us.  During this period, he constantly demonstrated his love to Jesus Christ, and his absolute hope in faith.  Through faith, he had a victory over the cancer.   The cancer could not rule over him.  Even the death was powerless before his faith.   

 

 

 

Why do we, believers, have the absolute hope even before death?    

 

We have our eternal hope in Christ.   We all know that what we see is temporary, and what we touch will not last forever.   These things fade away from our sight and touch while slowly losing their existences on earth.   This is a common wisdom.  Yes, it is true that our physical body also slowly fade away on earth, because it is what we can touch and see.  However, our inner person is different, which is renewed day by day by the power of the Holy Spirit.    As an eagle is soaring up high in sky, our faith in Christ is soaring up to Our Heavenly Father and connects us to Him daily while transcending this mortal body to eternity in Christ.  Therefore, our inner person does not experience the fragility of the things on earth. 

 

In fact, our physical body’s death is a just mere event of taking off our mortal, corruptible body and a glorious moment of joining Our Eternal and Ever-Loving Father.   Stephen, one of seven deacons appointed by the Apostles during the early church period, was a man full of God’s grace and power.   While he was preaching the Gospel, he was stoned to death by the zealots and the religious leaders at that time.  However, Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily into heaven and was able to see the glory of God, and he saw Jesus standing in the place of honor at God’s right hand.  And Stephen even spoke up, “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing in the place of honor at God’s right hand!”   He did not accuse those who were stoning him.  Instead, he prayed for forgiveness of their sin, as Jesus did on the cross.

 

It is also true that as long as we are in this mortal body, we, believers, also feel sadness and sorrow of being separated from our loved one.   Today, Robin, our dear sister in Christ, sang out beautifully our hearts and emotion at the memorial service.   What she sang was “The Will”, which beautifully rendered our faith of the above in the midst of the sadness of being separated with our dear friend. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, our heart is emotionally in sorrow, but we are truly in joy in faith, because God is our Ever-Loving Father, and His Will is infinitely good.  Amen!