We Belong to the Lord

A few months ago, I listened to a message podcast that seemed to bear a significant relevance to my situation. It centred on this verse:

Rom 14:7-9 'For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. For if we live, we live unto the Lord and if we die, we die unto the Lord. Therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end, Christ died and rose again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living'.

As I reflected on this and tried to recall what I heard from the message, several thoughts came to my mind.

Firstly, each one of us belong to the Lord individually whether we are living or have passed on. Even though one may be a husband and wife or a member of a family, God ultimately has rights over each one of us as individuals and He can call us up back to Himself as He sovereignly decides.

Whether we live or die we belong to the Lord.
We have been purchased with a price we are no longer our own. Inasmuch as Kathryn had been with us for the past 25 years I must understand that she belongs to the Lord and not to me. She had been entrusted to me to care for and to love during those years. God has every right to take her back unto himself.

Secondly, when we are alive, we are to live unto the Lord. This means that our lives are meant to glorify God through the manner in which we live our lives. We do not live for ourselves. When we die, we are also meant to glorify God in our death. As much as we need to live well, we need the grace of God to die well.

Kathryn has emphatically shown that through her death, God has been glorified through the number of lives that she has touched both directly and indirectly. She has indeed run her race well. She was not alone in her death. Many others felt the loss through her death.

She has shown us how to live and she has shown us how to die - with dignity and with purpose. I am privileged and blessed to have shared these few years with a woman of such stature.

God is both the God over the living and the dead. God's lordship over us does not end with the end of our life here on earth but it straddles across the curtain of mortality and time into eternity. May we all learn how to live well and also know how to eventually end the race well - with dignity and fulfilment.

MT
31 January 2011

In the Exam Hall

Date : Sometime in the past
Time : 11.30 am.
Event : GCE ‘A’ Level Examinations (Higher School Certificate)
Setting : School Examination Hall

I am sitting at my desk, feverishly working through my last questions in the English literature paper so that I can have enough time to do some last minute checking of the answers before the time is up. I look up at the clock at the front of the hall that stares back at me telling me that I have another half an hour to go before everything comes to a stop and I have to submit my answer papers, incomplete answers and all.

Complete silence around the hall as everyone, else bent over their desks, is doing the same. Suddenly, I could hear the sound of someone getting up from his chair, the hustle of papers being arranged neatly, ready to be handed in to the invigilators. From the corner of my eye, it was the person seated next to me. She had completed her answers ahead of me. She marched up confidently to the invigilators and handed up her papers. As she left the hall, she turned and glanced at me, gave me a wink, and said, ‘See you outside when it’s all over’.

Of course, she is not the only one to be leaving the hall early. Some of the others have long gone for different reasons. Some of them had come into the hall totally unprepared for what was to be an important examination of their school years and had no inkling of what the correct answers to the questions were. Half the time staring blankly at the question papers, scribbled some answers the best they could, doodled with their pencils, erased some of the answers before replacing them with fresh ones, uncertain of whether their latest answer would better than the one they had just deleted. They too left the hall, about three quarters through the exams.

“Time’s Up!” cried the invigilator as the clock struck 12.00 pm. Game over. Some of the other examinees just refused to put down their pencils and tried to put in some finishing touches to their answers, before their answer sheets were swept away by the invigilators. “How much more can they try to do in those two minutes before they had to surrender their papers?’ I thought. ‘tsk, tsk, tsk…”

Life is just about the same isn’t it? We look with envy at those who managed to complete their answers way ahead of time and wonder to ourselves, what did we miss? What did they have, that we lack? Yet in the examinations of our life, when it comes to someone that we treasure deeply leaving so early, it seems so different. We mourn, we pine, we weep. The truth is, they have completed their work and can confidently march out of life’s examination hall, while we who remain are left still struggling to complete the paper. There is nothing more they could have done because they have completed their life’s work.

Of course, there are those that have left early, having left behind unfulfilled lives, unable to complete what they were intended to do. And there are others, who while away their time, while the clock ticks away, only to rush in some last minute answers just before the clock strikes twelve.

I guess for us, we need to put in those answers diligently as best as we can, making the most out of the time we have before the exam is over. Till then, we need to remain focused and re-fire our zest for living and for life’s mission.

MT
21 January 2011

Where is God When It Hurts?

"Where is God when it hurts?

Really for most of us, this is the first thing we do when we are confronted with difficult questions in life - we seek God. However, in those moments God has a way of remaining hidden and silent. We are left struggling, groping for answers and relief, wandering and wondering. Where is He? Is He standing afar off, arms folded, watching as we haplessly struggle to tread water without going under.

I wonder whether this is how a person in the world feels when he is faced with a loss or pain. Have we been able to empathize and meet them at their level rather than expect them to come to our level, our programs, our activities. They watched, waited. No one has come forward. The church will go on, the world will go on, the activities will remain as they are, everyone goes on with their lives, the suffering continue to suffer, silently.

Pain they say is good, at least physical pain. It acts as a warning system to alert us of inherent dangers to our everyday life. But what about emotional pain? Something that is not very apparent and obvious. Can we stare at the face of someone suffering or someone dying and see beyond the physical pain to see the emotional pain? Do we take the trouble to do so? What do we do?

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pain" - CS Lewis. I wonder why we still religiously perpetuate the image of the priest and the Levite who walk by with blinkered eyes, muffled ears and muzzled mouths as we side-step the inconvenient and leave the responsibility to the uncelebrated Samaritan? Our view of the world remains that of trees walking.

Can we do without pain? Can pain be avoided? It's all around us, the hospital wards filled with the chronically sick and the dying where death seems to be the only certain relief to pain and suffering, the streets of the underprivileged with faces of anxiety for whom life's daily challenge remains food, shelter and clothing, the undernourished staring back at us with gaunt eyes and emaciated bodies, the lives of those abused looking into an uncertain future. Maybe that is why God chooses to remain silent - so that He can be heard through us; and He chooses to remain hidden - so that He can be seen in us or He chooses not to do anything - so that whatever He does is done through us. Where is God when it hurts? I wonder.....

MT
21 December 2010

Into the Warm Arms of God

Melissa, my eldest daughter and I were having a conversation a few days ago about Kathryn. It went on something like this:

'I wonder where Mummy is right now? Is she sleeping, to be awoken when Christ comes? Is she in the presence of God right now? Can she see what is happening on earth?'

We went on to talk about the story of the rich man and Lazarus, the beggar in Luke 16:19-31 where both of them died. The rich man found himself in hell while Lazarus was found in heaven with Abraham. I went on to say that not much is known about what happens during the period when someone dies to the time when Christ returns. Very few people ever touch on this subject.

I guess God must have overheard our conversation that night. Tonight as I was reading an online devotional passage by Max Lucado, I got excited when my eyes fell on the title of his devotional and what he wrote which I have reproduced below:


Week of January 7

Into the Warm Arms of God
by Max Lucado

What about my loved ones who have died? Where are they now? In the time between our death and Christ's return, what happens?

Scripture is surprisingly quiet about this phase of our lives. When speaking about the period between the death of the body and the resurrection of the body, the Bible doesn't shout; it just whispers. But at the confluence of these whispers, a firm voice is heard. This authoritative voice assures us that, at death, the Christian immediately enters into the presence of God and enjoys conscious fellowship with the Father and with those who have gone before.

Isn't this the promise that Jesus gave the thief on the cross? Earlier the thief had rebuked Jesus. Now he repents and asks for mercy. "Remember me when you come into your kingdom" (Luke 23:42). Likely, the thief is praying that he be remembered in some distant time in the future when the kingdom comes. He didn't expect an immediate answer. But he received one: "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise" (v. 43). The primary message of this passage is God's unlimited and surprising grace. But a secondary message is the immediate translation of the saved into the presence of God. The soul of the believer journeys home, while the body of the believer awaits the resurrection.

Some don't agree with this thought. They propose an intermediate period of purgation, a "holding tank" in which we are punished for our sins. This "purgatory" is the place where, for an undetermined length of time, we receive what our sins deserve so that we can rightly receive what God has prepared.

But two things trouble me about this teaching. For one, none of us can endure what our sins deserve. For another, Jesus already has. The Bible teaches that the wages of sin is death, not purgatory (see Rom. 6:23). The Bible also teaches that Jesus became our purgatory and took our punishment: "When he had brought about the purgation of sins, he took his seat at the right hand of Majesty on high" (Heb. 1:3 neb). There is no purgatory because purgatory occurred at Calvary.

Others feel that while the body is buried, the soul is asleep. They come by their conviction honestly enough. Seven different times in two different epistles, Paul uses the term sleep to refer to death (see 1 Cor. 11:30; 15:6, 18, 20; 1 Thess. 4:13-15). One could certainly deduce that the time spent between death and the return of Christ is spent sleeping. (And, if such is the case, who would complain? We could certainly use the rest!)

But there is one problem. The Bible refers to some who have already died, and they are anything but asleep. Their bodies are sleeping, but their souls are wide awake. Revelation 6:9-11 refers to the souls of martyrs who cry out for justice on the earth. Matthew 17:3 speaks of Moses and Elijah, who appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus. Even Samuel, who came back from the grave, was described wearing a robe and having the appearance of a god (1 Sam. 28:13-14). And what about the cloud of witnesses who surround us (Heb. 12:1)? Couldn't these be the heroes of our faith and the loved ones of our lives who have gone before?

I think so. When it is cold on earth, we can take comfort in knowing that our loved ones are in the warm arms of God. We don't like to say good-bye to those whom we love. It is right for us to weep, but there is no need for us to despair. They had pain here. They have no pain there. They struggled here. They have no struggles there. You and I might wonder why God took them home. But they don't. They understand. They are, at this very moment, at peace in the presence of God.


From
When Christ Comes: The Beginning of the Very Best
Copyright (Thomas Nelson, 1999) Max Lucado


It was as if God was concerned enough to answer our questions so quickly. For sure, there are many other questions that we still have. But for now, God's answer is good enough. How comforting and reassuring it is!

MT
7 January 2011