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The End
by Jerry Ousley I've often spoke of my grandma and grandpa. As a child I loved visiting them on the chicken farm in Pekin, Indiana. I had a lot of good times there and those two people meant the world to me. It was always sad when it came time to go. I hated leaving. Truth be known, even though I loved my mom and dad I'd probably lived with grandma and grandpa if they would have let me. I would always cry when it came time to go. But I'd also cry if they came to visit us when it came time for them to leave. It kind of makes me sound like a cry baby doesn't it? I just didn't like seeing our visits end. My grandpa died when I was only was only nine years old. I was visiting with them that summer when he passed away. I remember being at the funeral home in Salem, Indiana and seeing him lay there in that casket. I think I cried harder than I had ever cried before. I missed my grandpa and I didn't care that anyone knew about it. In 2000 my grandma died. She was ninety-eight years old. I didn't cry many tears over grandma. But it wasn't because I didn't love her and it wasn't because I was trying to be a man or be strong. It was mostly because as an adult I better understood that she wasn't in that tired, frail body any more. I knew she was in Heaven with grandpa and I also knew that one day I'd see them both again. Even though it was the end it really wasn't the end. They say "all good things must come to an end." I guess that's because our finite human minds can't understand anything that doesn't have a beginning or an end. But in God there really aren't any beginnings and endings; only a pause in life. Endings can have great results. Take the Gospels for instance Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Even though all four of these books are about the life of Christ each one ends just a little differently. Matthew ends talking about the Resurrection. Mark ends talking about the Ascension of Jesus. Luke ends by speaking of the coming of the Holy Spirit. And John ends with encouragement about the second coming of Jesus. Aren't those great endings? Without doubt, unless we are alive to witness the time when Jesus returns from Heaven to reap His harvest of believers still alive on this planet Earth, our day of end will come. We naturally fear the end. My grandma, although she talked often of going to Heaven and from her words I don't think that she could wait to get there, still there was a fear of dying a fear of the end. We don't know exactly what's going to happen. We don't know if our end will be tragic or a quiet passing in the night. The good thing is that the ending of the Gospels affect our ending. Because Jesus was resurrected from the dead we too have the promise of resurrection. Our salvation is a type of the resurrection because we die to our old life and get an all new life. That's the same with death. We leave this physical life for a greatly blessed and happy spiritual life with our Lord. The ascension of Jesus was an important part of our ending because He promised that He would go away to prepare a place for us. He's getting it ready right now. The coming of the Holy Spirit is important to our own ending because He is the One who will get us through our ending. He is our Comforter, our Guide and the One who'll carry us through the whole ordeal. Finally the second coming of Jesus is important to our end because we'll either be here waiting for Him to transform our physical into the spiritual or we'll be coming back with Him. I guess we could say that our end is really, without doubt only the beginning. Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge. Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |