Sometimes we get a chance to say goodbye to those we care so much about and sometimes we don't.
A stay-at-home mom raises her kids, watching them start school one by one. If you've ever taken your child to school for the first time, registered them, and left them there, you may have felt the emotional pain of walking away and leaving that little boy or girl with the teacher for the first time. Kids grow up and they begin to interact with their friends more and more, until, in their teenage years, they'll generally choose to spend time with friends than with mom and dad.
On one carefree August evening about a dozen years ago, two beautiful teenage girls left home to attend a field party, but they got lost trying to find it and wound up in a neighboring town. One of the girls called home at 11:30 on a pay phone to tell her mother where they were. As she hung up the phone, neither she nor her mother realized they had said their last goodbyes. Somebody killed them that night and left their bodies in the trunk of the car they were driving. It's a dreadful tragedy for parents to have to bury a child, particularly if that child was murdered.
Then there was the carload of six young people in their twenties who drove out of a parking lot not far from here one morning at 3 a.m. At least one of them had children at home. They were responsible adults. They disappeared that morning before daylight, and from what we read in the papers, nobody has a clue what happened to them. No goodbyes were said to their families, and as I write these words, nobody even knows whether they're alive or dead. These families won't have closure until they find out what happened. I can't begin to imagine what their relatives must be feeling.
Separation is a way of life for us here. Mom and dad generally pass away one at the time. The one that's left has to say goodbye to their marriage partner and try to keep going.
When a divorce splits families, one parent or the other has to say goodbye to the love they once had and to his or her children. Oh, there are weekends, but things just aren't the same. No wonder God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). If the children and the custodial parent move overseas or across the country, it may be years before the non-custodial parent even sees his or her children again.
I heard Chuck Swindoll quote an interesting statistic about adultery and wayward spouses a few weeks back. He said in 1965, for every woman who abandoned her family and left with a new partner, there were six hundred men who did the same thing. By the time the '90s rolled around, according to the statistic, there were two women abandoning their families for every one man. Regardless of how these numbers work out, that's a lot of pain, a lot of separation, a lot of goodbyes.
I knew of one military man who was stationed in Korea for a year. At home, he had a very attractive wife and beautiful teenage children. They were so happy to find that he was coming home. When he finally got there, he brought news that shattered their world. He told them he was filing for divorce. Having fallen in love with another woman in Korea, he decided to abandon his wife and children for her. His wife might have handled it better if his plane had crashed on the way back from Korea. I will say, however, that she has since re-married and seems very happy.
God originally created man and woman to have fellowship with Him, and for awhile, they did. There were to be no goodbyes. After the fall of man, life became one painful separation after another. Can you imagine the pain Adam and Eve felt when they realized that their son Abel would never come through their doors and sit at their table again? His brother Cain became a wanderer by God's edict, so they didn't see much of him any more either. Of course, Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters (Genesis 5:4), but to say goodbye to Abel, and then to their son Cain must have been severely painful. Adam and Eve had said goodbye to perfect fellowship with God after the awful debacle at the Tree of Life. That goodbye must have been an awful feeling as well, after the warm fellowship they had enjoyed with God previously.
Young Joseph was the favorite of his father Jacob but the least favorite sibling of his brothers. They sold him into slavery and lied to old Jacob, telling him that an animal had killed his favorite son. The old man was heartbroken over this separation for some thirteen years until he found that Joseph was alive and well (VERY well, as a matter of fact) in Egypt, and a joyous reunion took place.
While we are forced to say goodbye to loved ones when they die, God has a different perspective...
"Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints." Psalm 116:15
Have you ever thought about why the death of a saint is precious to God?
The key words here are "His saints." One of His saints is a person who has been adopted into God's family by coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ. He or she has, at this point, moved from death to life, from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God. The true saint's departure from this life may be a farewell to those left behind, but it's a grand and glorious hello to an eternity with Jesus Christ. According to Ecclesiastes 7:1, the day of a person's death is better than the day of his or her birth. From Solomon's perspective, life was long, dark tunnel of fruitless pursuits, and it would be a good thing to breathe your last on this earth, say farewell to this worn-out body and the rut of day-to-day living, going in the spirit to stand before God. It will, however, be a lot better for some people than others. For the lost, they'll be saying hello to Jesus Christ for the first time at the Great White Throne as they're being judged for the last time. Having died and gone to hell, they still have the Lake of Fire awaiting them, and it's far worse than hell ever was or could be.
As far as saints go, let's have a look at the apostle Paul's perspective:
"For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose. But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better; yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake." Philippians 1:21
Most of us have read this passage. Paul was completely ready to meet his Savior face to face. He had a clear perspective on his relationship to Christ, and he had nothing to be ashamed of. He knew his sins had been freely forgiven, washed away by the blood of Christ, and he knew that he had served the Savior with every fiber of his existence since that day when Ananias laid hands on him in Damascus, Syria.
So what about us? Each of us may say goodbye for the last time to all our loved ones today. For those who aren't saints, it will be an awful change for the worse. A saint is a man or woman who knows Christ as Savior and Lord. Some think they know Him, but they don't. Those who aren't genuinely in Christ will be astounded and horrified as they are escorted by cackling demons to be thrown into a pit of blistering flame. For them, things will only get worse forever and forever. That's what it's like to be totally separated from God.
Those of us who have confessed in our hearts that Jesus is Lord and believed in our hearts that God has raised Him from the dead (see Romans 10:9-10) may leave this life today only to fall on our faces before the risen Christ. Most of us recoil from that thought, because on this side of life, death is shocking and ugly. The world forces of this present darkness continually strive to divert our thoughts away from the day we'll die. Magazine ads seem to prod us toward the idea that we can always look thirty years old. Then we have to go to the funeral home to pay our respects to someone who has proved the ads wrong. The older we get the more deaths we'll see.
Are you a saint, having come to saving faith in Christ? If so, are you serving Him? Paul had such a powerful relationship with Jesus Christ that demons spoke his name in the same sentence with Jesus' name (Acts 19:14). Are you ready to meet Him? Or will you be ashamed because you have secret sins that will be laid bare before Him?
"For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed?" Romans 6:20-21a
So here it is. Are you ready, or not? Will your death be precious in the sight of God, or a disappointment because you never got right with him through Christ? Don't think you can escape the fires of hell on your own merit. Without the Spirit of Christ living in your heart, your righteousness is as filthy rags before God. In this case, your death will be precious only to satan. He wants your company in the Lake of Fire. R.W.M.
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