It’s been almost a year.
My friend Dan was one of those folks you couldn’t help but like. He was gregarious and friendly; larger than life really. As befits someone of that personality, he was a big guy; a former Marine, 250 lbs (I’m guessing) of solid muscle. Dan, like me in my 20s and early 30s, was a big fan of Japanese anime and that’s how we met. Together, we helped staff a couple of conventions in the 90s. Good guy. We weren’t the closest of friends, but I admired him. People like me, who tend to the shyer side of things, look up to folks like him. We envy their easy comfort with other people and their ability to live life as it comes.
It’s been almost a year since Dan didn’t wake up that morning. He had a massive heart attack in his sleep and died. He was just 42, my age. Far too young and utterly unexpected. All the comments one could say about such a passing apply here. I mourned his passing.
Even though it’s been a year, he’s never far from my mind. One of the wonders of this Internet age is that people are not easily forgotten. Dan’s Facebook page still gets activity; a lot of people still post to it with comments like “Wish you could have seen (this thing I did this week)” or “Wish you could have been there.” In addition to that, I stumbled onto some old photos of those anime conventions while looking through my computer. Found a few of Dan in costume. In some ways, I can’t get away. The reminders are constant. But I’m a lot like those people posting to his Facebook page. I too have a lot of things I “wish” Dan could see or be a part of. But that cannot be.
He made a cool Terry Bogard.
How many of us could tell a tale like this one? We all have those people that stick in our minds for whatever reason. People we loved and cared for who are now gone. Siblings, friends, parents, children, co-workers, and so forth who have passed on from this life to whatever awaits us beyond. People taken away from us too soon. People we miss. People we mourn still.
Life in this world is not easy. That is one of the first and hardest lessons we learn as we grow from children to adulthood. Certainly, one of the ways that difficulty manifests most potently is in the loss of people we love to death. That’s probably the hardest thing of all. Nothing lasts forever, we say. Sadder words are not spoken.
But the message of our faith contradicts this. The whole arc of God’s work in this world that we find in the Scriptures points to a God who is seeking a solution to our greatest trial; God is trying to fix death. That’s the blessing the Old Covenant alludes to. That’s the reason Jesus came. It’s the reason Jesus died and it is the reason he rose again from the grave. And that is what we believe and it is what we proclaim.
The book of Revelation is intimidating to many, filled as it is with all these weird images of monsters and cataclysms. But its ultimate message is a simple one: God’s plan succeeds. God wins. The passage we have for this week highlights this. John of Patmos sees a vision of a great multitude, those who have “gone through the great ordeal” that we call life. They have won because God has chosen for them to share in his victory over death.
This is our hope. This is what we look toward. That when our moment comes, when death comes to claim us, it will come as a welcome into this great multitude. And we will find among them those who have gone before us, waiting for us. And all that is wrong with our world will be put right. Because God put forward a plan for that very purpose. A plan that succeeded. A plan that we ultimately benefit from. Death will be no more. Crying and mourning will be no more. Victory will be ours.
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P.S. Just this morning, a few days after first posting this, I discovered a friend of mine from high school passed away from illness. Barry was one of the big reasons I became a football fan, being one of the "jocks" who didn't bully or pick on me as a kid. He was 44.
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