My life has been touched with the highest joys we can know in natural life, and the deepest griefs. I have seen persons weeping and laughing in both contexts. Weeping can be for joy or sorrow. What triggers that response? The body can provide an answer based on biology, but that answer is quite secondary to the invisible switch that permits a tear to fall. A well worded article appearing in the New York Times told the story of the author’s grief related to the death of his father. Here are a few lines from the article, and I have read many similar articles with each seeming special in its own way even when they resolve their grief in a temporary fix. He writes about the near forgetting of death until it came in slow decline in his father, the event, the ceremony for closure, and the disposition of so much tonnage. He received a delayed letter that had followed the reporter until after some weeks it caught up with him. He read the letter knowing it was the last message he would receive from his father. The letter was rather ordinary about home events, and included a joke: I laughed. And then, I cried. Some months later: my wife and I attended a gathering of grieving parents who spoke lovingly of their lost ones, and then of their knowledge that their child was now at Jesus’ side. There was a light in their faces. I envied them their resurrection, and did not return. He then asked himself if he had no more than all his daily life activity was there no place to go? He answered: I do. I have memories . . . . for the non-believer I’ve become, it is what passes for an afterlife.
I gasp at the sincere statements of this honest man. Memories die with death. They are temporary to the life of the one who holds them. They will not even be remembered by the persons making it to the Elysian Fields. There will likely be reunion and catching up to be done. There will even be a feast, if the Scripture is verified. There will be lost any former memories of persons who didn’t make it to the Fields. There will be no sorrow to distract attention. All life will be for joy: earth’s tears will be wiped away. That life will be in some infinitude as different as this life – as natural life is radically different from womb life. As for various reasons and procedures, womb life is cut off from life in open nature, so some in nature with unborn faith will be cut off from the life of resurrection miracle. The umbilical cord of faith from God was too soon severed in the earthly sojourn of many persons so to miss spiritual consideration to ultimate life.
I am a believer in memories, memories that are good ones. I am quite active in forgetting, or at least muting the bad ones. Whether good or ill, they are usually somewhat distorted either up or down in value. Even though I am appreciative to the point of thanking God for the meaningful memories that contributed to both natural and spiritual maturity, there is no way that I could justify relating memories to immortality. For many persons memories are gone before they have left their mortal coil. Who would rest in peace with memories only to maintain them? These kinds of natural and beautiful experiences are entirely mortal and conclude their meaning with the end of mortality for the individual. The wrappings of earth are trashed.
Those holding to faith see faith in everyday life. Without faith we could not develop trust in either man or God. If faith is only in the natural context it has no carrying power in the spiritual. Faith rests on trust that persons of integrity have acted, in word and deed, in ways that can be accepted even if all the evidence is not presently available. God saw to it that there were spasms of miracles and prophetic messages so to offer confidence in his laws, promises, blessings, maintenance and hope (immortality). No larger or greater provision has been proffered, and no greater can be. Since mankind can’t make the leap to God, God must make it to us for rescue. In Christ he did exactly that. His perfection is demanding of perfection on all matters. His plan, sacrificial so to justify mankind in the context of perfection permits the rescue. We have many analogies of the heavenly vision in the earthly context. He is the shepherd giving himself to the sheep, the parent caring for the child, the light (right) that smothers the dark (sin), the father sending his son to recover his creation, and judging those guilty who reject the ransom from the Son. He is the one who holds out in love for the return of the prodigal and rewards him if he returns home. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020