My beautiful and Christ-like mom, Susan St. John, passed away suddenly on May 13, 2020. Here are a few simple words upon which I meditated as we laid her to rest at the National Veteran’s Cemetery in Knoxville, Tennessee.
It is not suppose to be this way. After all, the Lord God “looked at all he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). But then, “sin came into the world through one man, Adam, and death through sin, and death spread to all people because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). So it was that the Lord God went on a rescue mission. “God demonstrates his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). “For as by a man, Adam, all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22), for Christ Jesus has been raised from the dead! “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5).
This is my mom’s story.
Jesus spoke of this, in a cemetery, in the face of a companion’s death. “Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into this world.'” (John 11:21-27).
Do you believe this?
This body in this simple casket is not Mom. Because Jesus is alive, Mom is too. “Absent from the body, present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). Because Jesus lives, she is in her Eternal Home.
Because Jesus lives, you and I have eternal hope.