An Entrance Into Glory

Every obituary is someone's child.


Think about it for a second. Often we only understand death when it directly relates to us; when we are the ones being impacted. But really, the obituary page we breeze through every day contains two...maybe three obituaries that we barely notice.But those are people's children, parents, and grandparents--and they are spending eternity somewhere.


That eternity can take one of two approaches. I have heard about two examples within the last year.


The first was an elderly man in Florida. His reaction to the gospel was always resistance. That resistance was evident in a life fraught with difficulty and poor decisions. Multiple witnessing opportunities were met with occasional questions of interest, but never commitment. The final state of his soul remains unknown--only God knows the heart of a man, especially in his final hours--so a person may only hope that his destiny was for the better.


The other was an old guy from Michigan. This guy had a rough life--much of it of his own making. But at the end of the day, it was clear he had chosen the path of righteousness. Even when the cancer took him to the brink of death, he was distressed, but "not crushed," as the Apostle Paul wrote. Finally, the cancer took him as he sat peacefully in his living room. But it was an entrance into glory.


Both of these men were my grandfathers. And each of these men have passed into either fire or glory.


Just like each of us will. Just like every single name in the paper.



"Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him."    -the Apostle Paul