I just found out an old friend of mine died. We were close at one time, in our 20’s. Now, not so much. I guess I always figured that we’d have time to catch up. Our lives drifted in different directions as we grew older. I don’t know why her death has hit me the way that it has. Perhaps because she was vibrant and alive and fun and we shared a lot of good times. Perhaps because she was kind, blunt and a mother and a daughter and a sister and I am all of those things too. Perhaps, it’s because it’s hard to conceive of someone my age dying of anything other than accidents, but having some health issues I am working through these days, perhaps seeing the possibility of my own mortality hits me as well.
As humans we weren’t created for goodbyes. Before the foundation of the earth we were created for eternity. Adam and Eve killed that option for us here on earth, Jesus came back and restored us to Heaven but nevertheless at the core of our being we are created for forever. Death seems like a foreign concept to us because it is. We don’t understand it because we have no built-in mechanism for the understanding of it. Our God is eternal, thus our author thinks on a limitless realm. That is ingrained in us and no amount of death among us changes our core belief that things are supposed to live forever. Rationally, those of us who believe in a life after mortal death, know that one day we will see each other again, but even then, we can’t wrap our brain around it because it doesn’t make sense to us.
We move on, we put our memories of our loved ones in little compartments of our heart but because we were built for relationship and eternity we don’t get over death. If those of us who believe that we will see each other again have such a hard time with death imagine what those who don’t believe in a life hereafter must feel? How much worse their pain? I can’t even imagine.
Pastor Susan 