Dear Friends,
It arrived just yesterday, flashing across my computer screen, an e-mail
which came from a good friend in a church I served in the 80’s- “Yesterday John
Beham passed away.”
While I hadn’t seen or talked with John for many years, I
considered him a dear friend. We served together in the church I pastored, we
fished together at our summer cottage, we laughed together on retreats, but
without much warning, the Lord called him home.
I called his wife, and as I was leaving a message I broke down and
began weeping uncontrollably, and even this moment as I write this, I feel the
tears welling up within. Another friend gone home. The older I get, the more of
these messages I receive and each one is just as painful as the last.
As I sat at my desk this morning, I opened up a book a friend had
given me as a gift. As I thumbed through the pages of A Good Old Age
by Derek Prime, hoping to find something that would speak to my sadness, I
turned to a chapter on hope, and I read these words. “Hope means that when we
attend the funeral of someone we love, we can both smile and shed a tear at one
and the same time. The Bible calls it holding ‘on to our courage and the hope
of which we boast” (Hebrews 3:6, p. 63).
Like Jesus who stood beside the grave of Lazarus, we shed a tear
over the death of someone we knew and loved. Yes, Jesus grieved -the Bible says
he even wept (John 11:35), as He stood beside the grave. But in a
moment His weeping would turn to joy as He watched his good friend step out and
shed his grave clothes.
Funerals can be a time when both sadness and gladness are wrapped
together in one emotion. We are sad that our friend is leaving us, but we are
glad for we know where he is going.
Death for the believer is no longer termination, but
transformation. It changes our position, but never our condition, for once we
are in Christ, death has no claim upon us for we are protected and safe within
His arms. That’s why it has been said that only Christians can smile at
funerals.
And when someone asks me why this is true, I can say, and
even sing the assurance of that blessed hope,
"For my hope is
built on nothing less
Than Jesus blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean
on Jesus’ name.
On Christ the solid
rock I stand;
All other ground is
sinking sand.” Edward Mote
And if you are looking for a further reason to smile at death, you
might want to turn to 1 Thess. 4:13-14 where you will read, “Brothers and
sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so
that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we
believe that Jesus died and rose ago, and so we believe that God will bring
with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”
And because of this I can say at my friend’s funeral, “So long,
John, but thanks be to God, I will see you later.”
Yours in faith and friendship,
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