This year’s Memorial Day offered far more celebration than remembrance, except in areas of the Southeast and Maryland grievously afflicted by sub-tropical storm Alberto. The day holds far greater meaning to Christians than presently thought.
Reason one. It reminds us of those departed from us and at home with Jesus. He keeps them in perfect peace, security and joy. Reason two. It assures us of his return to earth to finalize human history and to inaugurate the kingdom of God, of which the Church is presently its earthy embodiment. Reason three. Those now with Jesus in Paradise will instantly be renewed in glorified bodies. When they have, those in Christ still alive will be changed into those same bodies. That’s the HOPE Memorial Day surfaces. We’ll see again those we no longer see among us. All we can do now is visit their graves and put flowers down. Many who visit will also talk to the grave as if the person is still there. But that’s merely a self-defense mechanism. We do it from a desire to remember and not forget the one we put away. For they are not there. They can’t hear us. They don’t want to, dwelling as they do in unfathomed delight. As Revelation 14:13 says, the “dead who die in the Lord...rest from their labor....” If from, then not still involved with us. Let them delight in their deliverance from what we still experience. Reason four. As Hebrews 2:14-15 reminds us, death is humanity’s greatest enemy, because we have no solution for it, nor will any ever be found by us. Like Pharaoh’s kine and corn, death devours but, ever-devouring, remains skeletal, demanding more victims. Except that isn’t the end. Death is like a practice that a Law makes outdated and discontinued at a time in the future. The Master’s resurrection passed a law that doomed death to die! True, we still fill graves dug for us; or enclose the ashes in urns. But that’s because the “no more death” Law hasn’t gone into effect yet. Christ’s return on clouds of Glory will immediately put into the effect his Law that “death is no more, ever, eternally.” The final destruction of death is Christ’s ultimate promise concluding history—and only the beginning of LIFE eternal. When he returns our mortality will be eclipsed by his immortality. Our redeemed nature will be subsumed in his perfect nature. From that instant, and forever after, every thought we have, and every action we take, and everything he lets us be will be HIM living perfectly in US That begins a Glory that never ends. Thank God for a day to remember, to anticipate, to be perfected by the Perfect Christ.
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