Because of Jesus...more alive than ever

        Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  I Cor.15:51-57
        Praise You Lord that today this is reality for my dear sister-in-law.  Freed from the chains of sickness and cancer, freed from the chains of sin and death, and now truly, fully alive in You.  Alive as never before. Alive in ways we cannot imagine.  She is truly Home for Christmas for the first time this year. 
       How we will miss her...but how, even in deep grieving, we rejoice for her and for all those dearly loved friends and family who have entered Your glorious Kingdom.  Dear Jo Anna--her first Christmas in heaven.  And Ray.  And Lynda.  And Sam.  And so many others. 
       At this time, of all times of the year, how thankful we are for Jesus--for coming to this old earth, for wrapping Himself in our flesh, experiencing all our sorrows and pains and challenges, dying for our sins, conquering sin and death and rising to new life.  And because Jesus lives, Katherine lives...and JoAnna and Ray and Lynda and Sam and so many others live. 
        How I love the words of D.L. Moody written shortly before his own Home-going: "Some day you will read in the papers, 'D. L. Moody of East Northfield is dead.' Don't you believe a word of it!
At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now; I shall have gone up higher, that is all,
out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal --a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint; a body fashioned like unto His glorious body."
         Katherine--and all your believing loved ones--are not dead.  Because of Jesus and His coming at Christmas, they, too, are more alive than ever before. Because of Jesus and His coming at Christmas, we shall see them again one day.  Because of Jesus and His coming at Christmas, we, too, can rejoice with Paul, "But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" no matter what chains of sorrow, sickness, or difficulty confront us at the moment. 
          O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord. 
          To God--to the Lord Jesus who came at Christmas and conquered at the cross--be all the glory.