| The Ministry of Comfort |
Chapter 1 |
Page 6 |
Only yesterday an anxious friend was speaking about the dear ones gone. Are they sleeping in unconsciousness? Do they love and remember in that other land? Are they greatly changed? Shall we find them again, and when we do will they be so much the same that we shall know them, and that we can go on with the old story of love begun here? The New Testament teaching about death and immortality would seem to answer these questions. It shows us Jesus Himself beyond death, and He was not changed. He had the same gentle heart. He had not forgotten His friends. Surely it is the same with our dear ones who have passed from our sight. Death did not take from them one line of beauty. It ended nothing in them that was worth while. The things in them which we loved here are lovable qualities in them still. We shall find them again and shall get them back unchanged, and then we shall go on once more with the sweet life of love that began so happily here. George Klingle puts it beautifully thus:
“We are quite sure
That God will give them back–bright, pure and beautiful.
We know He will but keep
Our own and His until we fall asleep.
We know He does not mean
To break the strands reaching between
The Here and There.
He does not mean–though heaven be fair–
To change the spirits entering there, that they forget
The eyes upraised and wet,
The lips too still for prayer,
The mute despair.
He will not take
The spirits which He gave, and make
The glorified so new
That they are lost to me and you.
. . . . .
God never made
Spirit for spirit, answering shade for shade,
And placed them side by side–
So wrought in one, though separate, mystified–
And meant to break
The quivering threads between.”
Thus it is that looking through the window of Christ’s rent tomb we have a vision of life as immortal and in the truth of immortality we find boundless inspiration, comfort for every sorrow, and gain for every loss.
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