I heard from a dear friend from college days yesterday morning. She believes in Jesus and is worried about the world. There is a dullness in my heart too. A beautiful funeral last Saturday for a friend’s daughter, 38, and next Saturday another for a bestie’s 42 year-old son. The dull ache feels more like a burn that convulses. My bed is comfortable but that is buoying up my last bit of – I have no words. Sadness is a familiar stranger. Instead of drawing a line in the sand I want to draw a circle and hold all of my people close. “Hello darkness my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again” – 1964, Simon and Garfunkel. I would add “and again, and again, and again. Isaiah 49:6 is my new favorite Bible verse, “Indeed He says, ‘It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant To raise up the tribes of Jacob, And to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles, That You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth'”. All of those capitals tell us that the You, My Servant, You, You, and My means Jesus and God has clearly laid out His plan of salvation for all. Even all of these irreplaceable people leaving gaping holes. He loves each one. He loves you and me. We are, each one, a divine image-bearer from birth. The dash between that birthdate and our last day (if even so early) is all of the time we have to prepare for our real lives in Heaven. Heaven will be the main stage while today is a starter. In closing, Acts 17:26-28 (NIV) reads, “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.'”
