Words in the mouth of the wise are as seeds, that if planted correctly will yield bountiful crops in those same lives in the next one, two, five or even ten years.
But the words of the unwise will do exactly the same. I have actually overheard two particular people who have said such things as, ‘I will not live to an old age’, and another ‘If I ever lose my wealth there will be nothing for me to live for.’ Those two alone are already dead.
Well the good book states that ‘death and life are in the power of the tongue.’ And most people tend to underestimate the power of the words that they speak.
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Ian, my brother in law, you have left this earth and gone to heaven just this past week at the young age of only 50. Alone you were when you died, but we know that you had a welcome party waiting for you and now you reside with a company of people who love you dearly.
Flawed, like all of us. Scarred. Embattled. From the very moment you were born your body continued to come under physical attack time and time again throughout your lifetime. And yet amidst that tragedy there were glorious moments.
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Death. Invader of life. Destroyer of hope. Interrupter of youth. Usurper of health.
So when considering the insidious character named death, we can often be overtaken with a sense of despair and a sense of defeat.
And yet when we consider it in the light of the resurrection, we suddenly realize that ‘absent from the body, present with the Lord’.
Death is in fact the shedding of a flawed body that is to be replaced by the donning of a faultless body. This new arraignment will now allow us to reside eternally in a place of no sickness, no disease, no deformity, no hunger, no disfigurement, no pain and no more death.
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Life is full of significant moments. This one I am going to share with you was very significant. I wrote the following email to my mother today as I recounted that moment many years ago:
Hi Mum
At our Connect Group the other night, which we lead - about 20 adults from our church meet every fortnight - a member of our group shared how they led their grandad and grandmum to the Lord.
That reminded me of the following event which I am compelled to tell you, as I don’t know if I have ever shared it with you before.
Your dad to me was a poor example of what a grandad should be. A birthday card and a couple of bucks each year with the painful experience of having to ring and say thank you every year - as a kid - didn’t give me a lot of respect for him as a man. I was actually more and more offended as the years went by.
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