We just buried the last of my relatives of my mother’s immediate family, an uncle that I got to know much better during the last year of his life as we talked a lot about the loss of his beloved wife, a little over a year ago. Her untimely death broke his heart, and plunged him into a prolonged grief he barely could handle on his own. Being a deeply religious man, he sought comfort in God, but I could still sense his loss whenever we met. I know how it feels, as my own memories are just as fresh, as we talked and prayed together!
Thoughts from Timothy Keller’s Walking with God Through Pain & Suffering came to mind: “A distinctive Christian belief is the bodily resurrection from the dead for all who believe. One of the deepest desires of the human heart is for love without parting. I look forward to that as we get our bodies back, in a state of beauty and power that we cannot imagine. Jesus’ body was corporeal – it could be touched and embraced, and he ate food. And yet he passed through closed doors and could disappear. This is a material existence, but one beyond the bounds of our imagination.The idea of heaven can be a consolation for suffering, a compensation for the life we have lost. But resurrection is not just consolation – it is restoration. We get it all back – the love, the loved ones, the beauties of life – but in new, unimaginable degrees of glory, joy, and strength. It is a reversal of the seeming irreversibility of loss.”
