Good morning…
In the middle of this big moon night, I spend time with the beautiful bulletin from the celebration of life service for Mary Lynne Hamilton. I am inspired by her smiling face, her joyful essence, and her passion for the truth of God. I think I love this sentence most: “Mary Lynne is more alive now than she has ever been, and for this we give thanks even in our brokenheartedness.”
Now I visit, in the VOICE translation, the Scripture verses offered to us as encouragement. So we have no reason to despair. Despite the fact that our outer humanity is falling apart and decaying, our inner humanity is breathing in new life every day. You see, the short-lived pains of this life are creating for us an eternal glory that does not compare to anything we know here. So we do not set our sights on the things we can see with our eyes. All of that is fleeting; it will eventually fade away. Instead, we focus on the things we cannot see, which live on and on (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).
Let’s explore the footnotes connected to these two verses. “In chapter 3, Paul explains how the Spirit transforms believers so they are conformed to the image of Jesus. He now clarifies that this change means believers embody Jesus’ death through suffering and participate in His present, risen life. This life is ultimately experienced through the resurrection of the body in the future, but it also consists of an inward renewal in the midst of the challenges and troubles of daily existence.”
Paul continues: The One who has worked and tailored us for this is God Himself, who has gifted His Spirit to us as a pledge toward our permanent home. In light of this, we live with a daring passion and know that our time spent in this body is also time we are not present with the Lord. The path we walk is charted by faith, not by what we see with our eyes. There is no doubt that we live with a daring passion, but in the end we prefer to be gone from this body so that we can be at home with the Lord. Ultimately it does not matter whether we are here or gone; our purpose stays fixed, and that is to please Him (2 Corinthians 5:5-9).
All of those who have gone before us to heaven live on and on in the radiant presence of God. We, who are still left living on earth, experience an inward renewal in the midst of the challenges and troubles of daily existence through the power of God’s Spirit at work in us. We live with a daring passion, knowing that someday our final breath will leave our earthly body. Our bodies go back into the ground as dust. The breath of our life goes back to God, who gave it to us (Ecclesiastes 12:7, EASY). This enduring truth is part of God’s eternal design.
Like Mary Lynne, when our time comes, I trust that we will be more alive than we have ever been before. In reality, whether we are here on earth or we have gone to heaven, our purpose stays fixed. Our single purpose is to please the God who has created each one of us to live and to die with daring passion.
…Sue…
