Truth To Wonder: conversation for christ

On the Easter Saturday that has just past, my family and I visited the grave of my mother. The air was cold and crisp, whilst the weak Spring sunshine did it’s best to bring some relief from the windy chill. My mother’s grave lies in a large crematorium that serves a sizeable collection of towns. Thousands of graves stretch out across the landscape, as tall trees surrounding the site, hedge in the scene of loss from the outside world. The world doesn’t want to acknowledge that death will come for us all. And so, it keeps this sombre scene hidden away behind a veil of leaves. 

Standing at my mother’s grave with the silent air filling our ears, sadness quickly began to find its way to my heart. I looked at her grave and considered all that had happened since she’d passed. So much love lost; so many tears spilt; so many wounds quietly sobbing in pain within the soul. The gravestone marked the date of her passing, but I could barely believe it happened so long ago. The memories of her last days and hours are so vivid; like it all happened yesterday. Pain and sorrow can make time seem to shrink, making years feel like days. This, as many of you reading this will know, can make it feel as though wounds are never allowed to truly heal. Those wounds somehow always seem fresh, no matter how much time passes. 

I tried to hold back the tears to some degree. I didn’t want to distress my little girl, and so I looked out over all the thousands of graves, just to break away from the sadness of my mother’s grave. Looking out on those graves, many of them of little ones, I thought on how this silent and shunned plot of land will not always be so. For come the return of Christ Jesus, those graves will open, and the redeemed in Christ will rise with their glorified bodies, to join our Lord in the skies! They will be the first to join with Christ Jesus in such glory, when the joy of Christ will visit those graves. 

Whilst those who have gone on before us into eternity await that happy day; that day when body, soul and spirit are reunited in perfect glory, they wait in Paradise. Here, a thousand years are like a day, and a day like a thousand years. If pain can make years feel like days, then joy can make time fade altogether! I believe that this truth whilst reserved in its fullness for Heaven, we can know in refreshing moments of God’s grace and provision. In those moments of true communion with God in prayer, we can lose track of time itself. In times of humble and joyful service to God, we again can lose track of time. In such welcome times of union with our dear Lord and God, it feels as though time steps aside quietly, blessing us with a small taste of the nature of Heaven. 

This gift comes from the Lord Himself, as He seeks to show us that pain and sorrow can seemingly shrink the passing of time. Yet, His joy of which we are invited to know through Him, can make time fade altogether for a blessed moment. Such wonders of God are there to soothe the pains of mortal life. Without those sorrows, we in our blindness of sin, would likely never seek out His blessings. Yet oftentimes because of those sorrows, we run to Him for help and soothing. In doing so, we are lifted out of our considerations of the flesh and brought close to know His peace. In His eternal and loving embrace, time dares not intervene. We are left to know only His peace, and His everlasting love. If we dwell there, the day when we are reunited with our loved ones in Heaven, will come all the quicker.