Tony Denham
How do you get to God's Heavenly Kingdom? One of the common questions we ask when someone dies, even if only in our heart, is "Where are they now?" If we only see the physical world, we can't know for sure. We can look at the signs as the dead world in winter comes to new life in spring and see that it points to resurrection. We can see the bounty laid before us, even when we don't feel like we have enough, and see a provident and loving God. We can feel the love and presence of another even at a distance and know that they are more than their physical presence, but even still we don't know for sure where someone goes when they die.
What is left? The search, these big clues, and of course Faith. To seek the kingdom, to trust in this hope, and to meet this new life takes a certain kind of tenacity, one that people may even call stubbornness. This is not an unwillingness to change, because following God is continuous change and transformation. Instead, it is a stubbornness to hold onto Jesus and abide in his will, even when we can’t see all the facts, or even when culture is telling us to believe something else.
I was told that Tony was a gentleman, even if he could be quite stubborn sometimes. Though we might experience it as such, I don’t believe stubbornness is always a negative thing. It took a certain kind of stubbornness to walk Wendy home a great distance, because she had missed the last bus, even though he had no way home himself. It took a certain kind of stubbornness to be passionate about biking and train, only to help someone else win. It took a kind of stubbornness for Tony to cook out in the rain to make sure that everyone else was fed while camping. The list could go on. I think putting the other person first, or loving our neighbor as ourselves takes a kind of stubborn gentlemanliness that our current culture is not used to.
We know stubbornness can get in the way too. In our grief, if we stubbornly hold onto the person we have lost, we close ourselves off, we create walls and we become less, but if we can strongly hold onto Tony with a kind of openness, we will know that we have not lost him, we will see as his spirit in Jesus Christ is pointing our way to a hope that does not disappoint and at the same time we will be making space for others to enter in and fill our grief with new life.
Our stubbornness that says, I know what is right, I will only believe what I see and understand is another way we get in the way of the hope that God is trying to offer us this day. Instead, if we strongly hold onto God with a kind of openness, there is no telling what God will lead us to.
Remember what we just read: The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil. For thou art with me. The psalmist was not dead, no he was very much alive. In the midst of his life, he had begun to see that God had been leading him to everything he needed and even more. So he held on tightly to God and even in the worst times, he found that he never had to be afraid, or lack anything, because he knew the Lord was with him.
Isn’t this something we all want? To not be without, to be led to peace and rest, to have fear cast out. He had really discovered this, in the good times and the bad, because he stubbornly but openly held onto God. So can we discover this, in this life and the next.
So, that brings us back to our opening question. Where do we go when we die? In some ways that depends on what we are holding onto and what we are open to. Yet, in this life, we can already see that there is a new and restored life that we are already being invited into. We can experience that in Jesus no one ever really leaves us. We can experience a providence and love that points the way to more. So, we can trust and have faith that Jesus has gone ahead of us to prepare a place in his Father’s house for us and that he will take us to be with him. Even now, while we mourn the distance between us and Tony, we can know that he has been brought into Christ and now is experiencing the bounty of His presence. AMEN
