Arriving Home

Looking back at my younger years, I like to reminisce about the drive home from my grandma’s house. During weekend visits to my grandma’s house, I would play with my cousins who lived across the street from my grandma. The weekend would be nonstop fun — baseball in the backyard, bike riding, baseball cards, fresh maple long-johns at the local grocery store, playing with army men, pretending to be Cowboys and Indians, checking out the calves at the livestock building. Quite frankly, the weekend was exhausting for a six year old boy. So naturally, on the late night drive home on Sunday, I would sleep in the back seat of our car. At that age, the back seat was like a king size bed, and I was out for the duration of the trip home. But, when we arrived at home, my dad would pick me up while I was still sleeping and put me into my own bed. Home at last!

I think that’s what Jesus means to imply when He refers to a believer dying as a person that has just fallen asleep. We are in a transition between the physical world and entering into the spiritual world. For Jesus told His disciples, “I go and prepare a place for you! If it were not so, I would have told you that.” Jesus took the sting out of death through His sinless life lived on this earth and paid the price for our sins upon the cross. But more importantly, He rose in a new body, as death could not chain Him down, and He broke those constraints of death, allowing us the freedom to live life as God has always intended us to live. A life that Jesus calls “abundant living.” Do we have to wait to for this abundant living to begin after we die? By no means. As believers, God intends for us to start our living the abundant life right now, at this very moment. And this life just continues to be lived out even though we fall asleep. For when we awake, we will be able to see His face and the hope lived out on this earth will be completely fulfilled.

“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love,” as stated in 1 Corinthians 13:13.

The purpose of this blog is to encourage the believers that death is not to be feared but is just a car ride on our way to our final destination. And when we awake, we will be home at last!