I have often reflected on the powerful disparity between two inevitable aspects of life: love and death. Love is the greatest, most divine attribute and the highest virtue. To not have love is to be degenerate to the extreme. But then there is death, the other powerful inevitability of life. The two live in such conflict with each other. Death seems to punish love; for the greater the love the more painful it is when one is bereaved by death. Death tortures us for loving those of whom we are bereaved and yet it does not invalidate love; it does not make us regret having loved. We always turn back to love again and again, despite how vulnerable it makes us. Have you ever considered this? Again and again death punishes us for loving and yet still we continue to love. True love, by its very nature, is unending. It cannot cease. Death, however, will one day cease, for death has been vanquished by the love of God. Those who die in Christ will live again and even now they live because of the love of God which was demonstrated in the death of Christ. Christ’s love on the cross was the death of death. You need not love death and you need not fear it. Because of Christ’s love, death will only lead you to God’s love. Death is now under the command of love. It leads us to God who calls us to eternal life. We will all be together again in love and in Christ. Nothing is surer than this. That’s what Jesus was declaring when he raised the dead.
Remember those loved ones who have died. Thank God for eternal life.
Read Luke 7:11-17
