Hi friends!  I’m back! To you perhaps I was only gone yesterday, but I’ve been away for a week and a half.  We had family vacation that was such a precious time, and I might also add, very needed.  We tend to go at break-neck speed, so getting out of town to rest and refresh is truly critical for ministry families (and I’m sure every other family!!).  We got to spend those days at the ocean.  Here’s a totally unedited picture of the sunrise on our last day there…

That was well worth getting up early to see!

I was amazed that there were a few people walking away from the sunrise that morning instead of towards it!  Why  would you turn your back on something so beautiful?  I couldn’t understand that one!

We got home from vacation on Sunday and while we were unpacking the car, we learned that a dear man in our church had been taken to the hospital.  We dropped everything and went to spend the evening with him and his daughter.  He’s a precious member of our church and truly like family to us.  We went to the hospital, not watching the clock, but his face, and also his chest rising slowly with each deliberate breath.  This event changed everything his week would have looked like.  Instead of being in the comfort of his home, he was being poked and probed, and was now confined to a small room with beeping machines and IV drips that allowed him to sleep.  It seems that his day to leave this world is imminent. Scripture tells us…

It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this, the judgment. Hebrews 9:27

I visited him in his hospital room again yesterday.  As I drove home later in the day, I thought about all the people passing by me in their cars, scurrying here and there, sure they’re going to have tomorrow, making plans as though they’ll live forever.  Some are ignoring God and His call to trust Christ for salvation.  They assume that this thing of dying is far off.  They are like the people on the beach who were walking away from the sunrise, ignoring the fact and the beauty that was just behind them.

These moments are appointed to each of us.  If Christ doesn’t return first, we will each die. We will each have a change in the plans we were making for that day.  Do you understand that death can be, not just a fact, but a beautiful thing? Oh the process can be ugly and hard, but the end result of death is seen in this verse as being precious…

Psalm 115:16 – Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.

Psalm 23 reminds us that death is only a shadow, and a shadow cannot hurt you.  For our dear friend, when he takes his last breath here, he will open His eyes in heaven.

Absent from the body present with the Lord!  II Corinthians 5:6

He has this assurance because He received Christ as His Savior for His sins.  He trusted in what Christ did for him on the cross and those truths make dying beautiful.  Our friend’s death, whenever it happens, has reminded me that death is like that sunrise – it will happen, and I can look forward to it and see the beauty in it.

Are you turning your back on the reality of death?  If you’re afraid, is it because you don’t have an assurance of eternity with the Lord?  Trust Him today to save you and receive the joy of walking with Him here, and having the comfort of a beautiful meeting in heaven One Day!