As you live your life, there are seasons where you feel the bottom has fallen out. Everything is going fine, then all of a sudden disaster hits. Life changes. It takes a long time to get over it, if in fact you ever fully recover. It could be the loss a loved one, a devastating divorce, a job move, some cutting words from someone you highly respect, a relationship that goes sour, or some other emotional disaster.
Another event that affects you includes the passing of someone from this life to life eternal. Often times a loved one that leaves this life leaves you with a void that is never, ever filled again. The time of mourning goes away, but life is never the same. Edward Markham wrote of the death of Abraham Lincoln: His passing from the human scene was like the falling of a great tree, which in its falling left a lonesome place against the sky. Chances are you have experienced similar feelings with someone the Lord has placed in your life.
The Holy Bible talks much about death. It gives you comfort in knowing that death for the Christian is a happy time. When you die, you leave this cursed earth and enter heavenly bliss. The pain of earthly existence is left behind, and the utopia of heaven replaces it. Jesus in John 5:24 affirms that belief: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, and has passed out of death into life.” Although, you feel the loss of someone leaving this life, you can feel assured that the Christian is now really living.
That black cloud of death separates you from that person you cherished, but the curtain has not closed. They are experiencing true happiness, and one day you will be reunited with them. Now, that black cloud does not seem quite so black after all.
