On this All Saints Day, my heart was warmed and encouraged by these words from Gerald Oosterveen's book, "Too Early Frost."
Parents are not supposed to bury their children. The old are not supposed to stand beside the graves of the young. It is unnatural. One is not prepared for it. The death of a child tears apart a family like the uprooting of one plant out of a cluster that have been allowed to grow together in one pot. It cannot be done. All those roots become so intertwined over the years that nothing short of violence can separate them. And it leaves all the plants stunted...
Oh yes, we mourn...But we have hope - bright hope for tomorrow, when all who trust in Jesus Christ as Savior will move beyond pain and grief forever because we shall be forever with the Lord. And it is not just some pipe dream, some opium to stupefy and mislead hurting people. It is real, because Christ is real, because in our past there is a blood-stained cross on which the Prince of Glory died. Because of that bloody, pain-filled past we have hope when all things are made new and death shall be no more, nor grief, nor crying.
In a little cemetery in a small out-of-the-way town there is a tiny marker. It bears only three lines:
1961-1970
GERARD RICHARD OOSTERVEEN
"At Home with Jesus"
Of the three lines, the last line is the only one that really matters.
"At Home with Jesus." When I think of my Mother and Father, when I think of good friends like Jim Peterson, when I think of the people who I've had the opportunity to serve as pastor and shepherd, the only line that really matters and the only line that can comfort sorrowing hearts is that they are at home with Jesus.
Let that line, that thought, be your comfort today as you think about and give thanks for those you loved who were loved by Jesus even more and now rest in His gentle and nail-scarred hands.
