“I wish all of us could live in one house,” said my grandson when he was leaving to go home. “Why can’t all of us live together?” To him that would be the best arrangement anyone could think of.
William, you are just a little ahead of your time. Some day we will do exactly that! Some day we will stop having to say goodbye. We’ll all just move into God’s big house together—forever and ever.
Farewells are so hard, especially when you’re saying them to someone you dearly love who is about to leave this life. You care about that person intensely. The last thing you want is to be apart. Even when the person is a believer and you know that you will see him again in Heaven, you dread the separation and loss.
It is for that very reason that Paul wanted to be sure we understood what happens to those who die who have put their faith in Christ. “Brothers, we do not want you … to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope,” he wrote. Then he explained: One day “the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command … and the dead in Christ will rise first.” Their renewed bodies will rise from the graves—without the ravages of aging and disease. Then all of us who are still alive “will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17).
Did you notice that word “together”? The greatest family reunion ever is coming! He said we’d be caught up together, “and so will we be with the Lord forever.”
Don’t you want to be sure you’re going to be present at that great family reunion? Take time right now to ask Jesus to be your Savior. Don’t put it off. You don’t want to miss the reunion!
