A Time For Celebrating

. . . absent from the body . . . present with the Lord.

2 Corinthians 5:8

When Christian author and speaker Dr. Bob Hill was seventy-one, his mother passed away. She was nearly ninety-four. Family and friends gathered in St. Louis for the memorial service, and Bob rose to open the funeral. “Friends,” he said with a smile, “this is not a time for grieving but a time for celebration.” At that moment, Bob suffered a massive brain hemorrhage and slumped to the floor. As his wife and children rushed to the platform and gathered around him, he slipped into glory.

Bob had written sixty books and had preached hundreds of times, but his last words were perhaps his most memorable. He had intended for them to be about his mother, but they became instead a comfort to those he himself left behind.

While it’s necessary and normal for us to grieve, we also sense a celebration going on in heaven when a loved one falls asleep in Jesus, and we sorrow not as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). But such an occasion also causes us to revisit our own lives and reexamine our walk with the Lord.

Are we really living a life worth living? Are we doing those things that when we stand before the Lord, we’ll wish we had been doing?