Something has been on my mind lately, and I’d like to process it here with you.
My father died suddenly 60 years ago; I was seven years old at the time. Over the next twenty years or so, I thought of Dad daily, albeit through the lens of loss, blurring over an ever-expanding distance in time. As the years ushered me through the various stages of life, there came a point when I thought of him less frequently, and then not much at all. This has suddenly changed.
My life here on Earth is much closer to its omega than its alpha, and as time rolls on, the crystallizing reality of reunion with my father eclipses the mere conceptual notion of it. The growing chasm of separation from him succumbs now to the closing gap unto reunion. Hope now fills a well I did not know was dry, and balm soothes a wound I scarcely knew lay open. Is there a Biblical basis for reuniting with those we knew then lost? I believe the Bible says, yes.
When at seven days the baby born extramaritally to David and Bathsheba died, the grieving king lamented the loss of the child, while also acknowledging their eventual reunion: “Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.”1 When Peter, James and John witnessed Jesus’ transfiguration — His face shining brightly and His clothes dazzling whitely2 — Moses and Elijah joined Him there, each apparently identifiable and retaining his individuality long after his earthly demise. In his Genesis account, Moses records the passing of “the father of all who believe”3 this way: “Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.”4 David’s obituary — “David rested with his ancestors and was buried”5 — adds the peaceful element of rest, a seeming cessation of strife. Both accounts paint the portrait of reunion.
Yet there is something greater here, a larger context, a higher vision. Paul glimpses the great day still to come: “The dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.”6 We will be together with each other, and what a joyous reunion that will be. Greater still, we will aways be with the Lord. Together.
Reunion awaits. What higher hope could there be?
Father, thank You for those who have gone on before us into Your presence. May we, like them, place our full confidence in Your Son Jesus, that when the time comes, we will together reunite with the Lord. In Christ we pray. Amen.
1 2 Samuel 12:23 ESV
2 For ESV accounts of the transfiguration, see Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9:2–8, and Luke 9:28–36.
3 Romans 4:11 ESV
4 Genesis 25:8 ESV, emphasis added
5 1 Kings 2:10 NIV
6 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 ESV, emphasis added
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Paul Nordman—Author 