He is our hope.

You go on and live until you feel alive again.

Call the MidWife, a television series about midwives helping women in east London, an area of poverty near the Thames River. We’ve been watching the series for several years.  Nonnatis House is where several Church of England nuns and other midwives live together and assist the women in the district when they give birth and advise in care for their little ones. There is life and death on these streets and humble flats, near the docks where ships converge.  All episodes have at least one birth and often there is death. Kind of like our lives, isn’t it? Life and death every day.

Our souls are settled.

This past week, someone of renown died, Barbara Bush, at age 92. I’d never met Mrs. Bush, but I admired her spunk. I always enjoyed seeing she and her husband together. They seemed to share love and affection for each other. I like what her oldest son, President George W Bush, said: “our souls are settled because we know hers was.”

He is walking streets of gold.

There’s another death in my area of acquaintances. A young man of only twenty-two years. He died of leukemia. His mother wrote this about him: His body is buried in the Garden of Faith next to Gordon (his father), but he is walking streets of gold in heaven with his dad. 

There can be hope.

Both families express faith and hope in seeing their loved one again. That’s not to say they aren’t grieving, yet they have hope. I heard a phrase on an episode of the midwife series that resonated with me. Perhaps it will with you, too.

You go on and live until you feel alive again.

That’s really how grieving is. Your life goes on–even though you’d like it to stop. You make the necessary arrangements. You plan the service. You find something to wear appropriate for the service. You do the numerous tasks that must be done. You keep on living. Then the funeral is over and life goes on for everyone else. Yours too, though so vastly different than it was before your loved one died. You go on and live…..until you feel alive again.

It will get better.

I’ve been through the painful loss of a close loved one several times. I can tell you–especially those of you who re experiencing loss now. It will get better. You won’t hurt so badly as you do now. I promise. Lean onto the hope that our Lord and Savior gives us. I like what I read this morning, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. That really is our only hope.

 

One of my favorite verses.