Silver Linings

Last week my wife and I had to travel to her home state for a sad reason. Her mother passed on to heaven. But the wonderful thing about being a Christian is even something so sad as death still has a ‘silver lining’ as that person immediately leaves this life and enters heaven’s glory !  It is a great comfort knowing Jesus rose from the dead and that being the case, those of us who are saved will also !!   Paul wrote, “. . . to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” (2 Cor.5:8).

We also enjoyed the ‘silver lining’ of seeing family members and friends we hadn’t in some time.   Yet heaven will insure that for all eternity, not just a week’s stay !    And as we read Scripture, prayed and sang great hymns of the faith, my mother-in-laws’s favorite being ” It is Well With My Soul” (which we sang at her bedside as she lay dying) and at her funeral later, we took comfort in the great truths from the lyrics. Another ‘silver lining’ despite sadness.

Finally, the preaching of God’s Word and comfort of their pastor was a ‘silver lining’ too.  I was struck by something he said at the gravesite as he referenced Gen.50:26 where we find the word “coffin” used the only time in the Bible. The Hebrew word means a money or hope chest.  A box wherein we place something of great value to us.  YOU are of immense value to God, He DIED for YOU !!!    No matter what hardship you may go through today or have been going through or will go through, even death itself, the ‘silver lining’ to it all is that YOU are so loved by God and the proof will one day be eternally seen as we see and sing and serve with Him forever in the sweet by and by !!