By Alex Florez
Scripture Reading: Psalm 103:15-16, Psalm 90:12-17, Psalm 139:1-24, John 10:7-10, Revelation 21:4-5
A few nights ago, a shrill ringtone pierced my deep sleep. I answered and heard my aunt sobbing hysterically. I knew this call was coming, but I wanted to hear her say it. Maybe that would make it real. She finally managed to string a few discernible words together: “He passed away.”
My grandfather was dead.
Like all humans, my “Grampy” was complex, an image-bearing creature with a dynamic, complicated, beautiful history. His was a life marked by internal struggle between opposing forces—strength and weakness, pride and humility, goodness and iniquity, even life and death. Like all of us bound up in this mortal coil, my grandfather was a portrait of the tension that exists between the corruption of the flesh and the hope within our immortal souls that there is more available to us than what our present world would have us believe.
What hits hardest in this moment is the stark contrast between grieving and celebrating. In the rawness of my feelings, I feel clumsy and confused trying to process these two seemingly antithetical emotional responses to my grandfather’s passing.
The constant collision of opposing forces in our lives can be disorienting, frustrating, even heartbreaking. We might be left to despair were it not for the fact that the God of the universe wrapped Himself in humanity and demonstrated that He intimately understands the shove-and-tear, stretch-and-squeeze reality in which His image-bearing children exist.
From the immaculate conception to the agonized “Father, Father” on the cross, from the virgin birth to the momentous “It is finished” as He breathed His last, the life of Jesus magnificently marries the contradictory facets of our human experience. It is only in drawing near to Him that we can rest in the bewildering chasm that exists between all the extremes of our lives. Jesus understands it because He lived it, and He is our refuge as we live it ourselves.
For followers of Jesus, the tension between life and death, between grief and joy is fundamental to the journey of faith. And in Jesus, death is defeated once and for all. His resurrection guarantees the resurrection that awaits those who call Him Lord.
My grandfather is gone, and my heart hurts so much. But isn’t it crazy that I want to laugh and sing through my tears when I think about the awesome man he was? I’m convinced that my soul knows how to mourn and dance at the same time because I was made in the image of a God who willingly died to give me life. I can weep and sing all at once because I have a Savior who came that I “may have life and have it in abundance” (John 10:10).
Written by Alex Florez
Post Comments (0)