Who’s Waiting for You?

We met yesterday afternoon as we do every Sunday afternoon with two ladies who live in our condo building. We have a prayer, sing some church songs and usually read a part of the book of Luke, though occasionally we’ll go to another of the four Bible stories of the life of Jesus to fill in a gap. It is a fun and fascinating hour.

One of the ladies has been raised in the Catholic church and is very faithful there. The other lady is Danish and is a non-attending member of the Danish church. Neither of them, though, is familiar with the stories in the Bible.

We started with Shadrack, Meshack and Abednigo; went on to Daniel; to Moses; John the Baptist; then to Jesus. We are all four thoroughly enjoying it. It began as a response to being locked out of church because of COVID-19 but have now agreed that we will continue even after we return to church services.

Yesterday we sang the songs, “This World is not My Home” and “I’ll Fly Away.” I pointed out that I love the phrase in the latter song: “When I die, Hallelujah” by and by.” And we got to talking about death. One of the ladies told two stories.

The first was of a man who had been very near death for several weeks, but who was holding on. She just asked him, who was in Heaven waiting for him. He smiled and named a brother and his mother. He relaxed and was dead two hours later. The second was a similar story.

Those were powerful stories for me. So many of us are afraid of death, but we have no reason to be. God lives before, during and after the creation of time. He was, He is, and He is to come. Jesus has prepared a place for us and is waiting for us there. There is a welcome party planned, just waiting for the guest of honor to arrive. If God really has good works planned for us here (Ephesians 2:10) it is good for us to stick around here awhile to work on some of them, but when He is done with us here, we should be more than ready to go on home.