The Audacious Hope of the Resurrection

February 17, 2011

Tomorrow we will say “goodbye” to my mom. On Valentine’s Day, our family gathered around her bed in the emergency room of Saint Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City. In the same way that she comforted us when we were little, we kissed her forehead, held her hands, rubbed her feet and sang to her as we said “goodbye”. Something seems wrong about even having the word “good” in Goodbye. I remember when we were missionaries and when we had to say “goodbye” to my mom and dad as we left their house to return to the field. Mamma and Daddy would be standing at their front door, holding one another and crying as we pulled away with grandkids that they would not see for another two years. Now I feel that we are left holding one another crying as mamma pulls away.

It is nearly unbearable to say this “goodbye”. Even at times when I may have thought that no one in the world believed in me or loved me, I always knew that my mom believed in me and loved me, not because of anything I could do or certainly not because I believed or valued the exact things she did, but she just loved me and believed in me.

So, tomorrow we will lay my mom to rest beside my dad at Rest Haven Cemetery with graves facing to the east, awaiting the day of the resurrection when the resurrected Christ for whom they lived and whom they longed to see face to face, will incredibly call them from the grave just as he called Lazarus and just as he will call me as well.

“Thanks be to father of compassion and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles” – 1 Cor. 1.