Talk of JESUS .com

Tag: death

  • A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 5

    A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 5

    [In case you are joining our serial short story about grief a little late, here is a link to the beginning.]

    “Do you see all those stars,” the little girl asked? “There are more of them in heaven than sand on the beach. Know how I know?”

    I nodded that I didn’t and her dad looked our way in interest (for he too had been silent all along).

    The little girl continued: “God told Abraham,

    “You’ll have more kids than the sand on the beach or the stars in the sky.” [Gen.22:17]

    “Well, that was a long time ago and there’s lots more stars in heaven now.”

    I smiled and nodded confirmation of the little girl’s encouragement.

    I was thinking about the lifeless fluid-filled corpse in the casket. It wasn’t very encouraging. The scene was as frightening to me, truth-be-told, as the wax-carved bodies at Ripley’s.

    Another image quickly came to mind. If zombies could be real as dancers in a music video, then the next room would be as fearsome as death.

    I glanced ever-so-briefly toward the adjacent doors, through which I had fled into this vestibule.

    As I looked back to the girl and her picture I asked, “Why is that star so much brighter?”

    (I had not considered the impact of her matter-of-fact answer.)

    “THAT one’s my Mommy.”

  • A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 4

    A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 4

    When we were children, all of us remember “visiting” some favorite great grandpa, or grandma, or aunt or cousin…

    (The connections of the generations do keep getting closer, don’t they?)

    … and we had to file past an open coffin with a corpse, all the time thinking things like, ‘Grandpa never wore a suit,’ or ‘She never wore that much make-up,’ and thoughts of distraction like that.

    ‘Barbaric!’ I thought. ‘Why would any civilized people do this?’

    ‘I know… I’m going to put in my will that if you have an open coffin “viewing” of me, I’ll come back and haunt you!’

    Well, that was yesterday; but one other thing I noticed, as I attempted refusal to look at the dead corpse as I dutifully filed by the coffin: a little girl.

    She was sitting with a man in another room (probably her daddy), and she was coloring with crayons.

    So when I surveyed the scene for a place of escape (though there seemed no escape from this gloomy place), I walked toward the child, looking for a lost glimpse of joy.

    —

    I glanced toward saddened, tear-filled eyes of her father and stooped down to the child.

    “What’cha drawing?’ I asked.”

    The little girl looked up into my eyes. “Heaven.” Then she looked back to her paper and continued to color.

    I studied her picture and looked at her father, then back to her drawing.

    “How do you know there’s a Heaven?” I inquired of her (out of the clear blue sky)?

    Then her loving little eyes looked up toward me and her meek little voice boldly proclaimed:

    “IF there wasn’t a Heaven, I COULDN’T DRAW IT.”

    Silence… (I had not expected this.) I felt ‘a sadder eyes’ of others gazing our way. The little girl didn’t go back to her drawing, either, as if she was expecting my reply.

    (But I didn’t know what to say to this little girl, sitting beside her daddy with tears in his eyes.)

    “I better tell you about it,” she said.

    “I WAS THERE! And I see you don’t understand Heaven from my picture.”

    I gave no answer to her childish innocence saying, “I was there.” But she was right: I didn’t understand it.

    —

  • A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 3

    A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 3

    As I looked about the church, I noticed a former love of my youth and recalled retreat from my initial impression. I looked forward with some hesitation to some later inevitable conversation between us.

    I thought of others about whom I had also been quite mistaken: some by positive first impression, others by discovery of time how my negative early pictures of them would be just plain wrong.

    As I stared emptily into the high trusses and the stained glass, I recalled: ‘The end of all being is the happiness of man.’

    (I think it was from Voltaire or someone like that, from a philosophy class I had nearly failed in college.)

    Then I remembered one lover who had said to me, “I’m not happy.” And then it was over.

    I also thought of a time when I was confronted with a similar situation by a dear friend saying, “I have no reason to live.”

    And I guess that if the reason for man’s existence is happiness, then it could possibly be true. But I had begged my friend at the time to allow me to drive there to talk, and not to do anything rash before I could get there. It would take me almost two hours on dark roads to drive to this place where I had never been.

    But reminiscing about these loved ones from days past was not the reason we were here. And I pulled in my attention to the cross at the front of the church.

    —
    Someone said something about Heaven… then my mind really started wandering.

    I looked around the church for some helpful pictures, but thought more of a strange picture from yesterday.

    I guess that if you look around at all of the different kinds of churches with their different kinds of cemeteries, you see some oddities of how we think about occasions like this.

    Last night was one of those odd sorts of occasions that display the incongruous thinking of some of our customs. This particular place and custom had always been dutifully performed in our family with fear and in trepidation

    – the formal visit to the funeral home, for the showing of the body.