No. So Long for a While.
July 27, 2010 Tuesday)
Yesterday I conducted the funeral service for Viola McNorton, who had been my friend for 46 years. Ten years ago I participated in the funeral of her husband, Merle. Both people were very, very active in the First Baptist Church of Rockport and I considered myself fortunate to be counted among their friends. I knew them a long time, long enough to watch their family grow and to help them count their blessings.
A few years ago, someone told me they attended a funeral I conducted and as I talked about the person who had passed, they began to identify with me in my efforts to talk about the deceased. The observer realized that I was talking about my friend, someone near and dear to me, someone I had known a long time. The person about whom I was speaking had been through many and varied experiences, and I had been there for some of them. We had gone through some very difficult times together, and happy times as well. Then the observer said to me, “I can see now that the longer you stay in a church as pastor, the more often you conduct the funerals of close friends. That must be hard.” Well, it’s hard to lose a friend, but it’s a real privilege to be asked by their families to say a few words of remembrance. Such was the case today. After a friendship that spanned almost half a century, I said goodbye to a dear friend.
But, and here’s the part I like, it was not, “goodbye.” It was, “so long for a while.” We know that a believer who dies does not really die. Oh, of course the body dies. No doubt about that. But the spirit of that person leaves the human body and goes immediately to be with the Lord. “Absent from the body, present with the Lord” ( 2 Cor 5:8). We shall all be given new bodies that shall never die (1 Cor 15:50-58). We have a home in Heaven, and it’s being prepared for us even as we live out this day here on Earth (John 14). It’s not “goodbye,” therefore, as we think of all the Lord has prepared for us. All these promises are yours if you have given your heart to Jesus as Savior and Lord. If you have not done that yet, you can do it today. Right now. You’re invited to do so.