Here She Comes!

On the evening my mother and I planned Papa Rick’s life celebration, she asked me to recount the story on dying that I used at her brother’s funeral almost three years ago. For the believer and follower of Christ, this account from Henry Van Dyke on dying is so accurate:

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!”

“Gone where?”

Gone from my sight. That is all.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!” There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: “Here she comes!”

And that is dying.

For the Christian, death is not the end; it’s just the beginning. Thank you, Jesus.