ACCORDING to what at dying you see before your eyes, you can not say otherwise, than that it is Death, that terrible enemy of God and man, who finally succeeds in swallowing up a life so precious to you.
It was not his first attempt. At least it is exceptional, when he who dies has not been stricken by sickness before, and there was fear of Death around his bed.
But at those earlier assaults of Death it was still averted. After the evening in which weeping made our heart weak, there had been joy in the morning. Having reached the crisis, the disease gave way. And, O, what unspeakable wealth for the heart was this getting back of our beloved sick.
But now it went otherwise.
Nothing helped, nothing availed, and with the passing out of that last faint breath, it seemed as though cruel death laughed at you, with all your unheard prayers and your futile endeavors, and scornfully whispered in your ear: “In spite of all I won the day, this time the morning in which you were to rejoice, did not come.”
And there you stood, heartbroken, at the deathbed-side. And there lay your dead, soul-less, life-less. Yea, truly indeed, as it seemed, swallowed up of Death. Swallowed up, so hard a word. As we say of a beast of prey, that it devours. Everything at once gone. The look of the eye, the sweet word of the lips, the warm handgrasp, the speaking of the face.
Everything at once gone. Cold, withered, somber. Life swallowed up of Death.
He who has no other eye, sees it in this way. He who knows nothing but the world, can not see it otherwise.
And let us acknowledge it, as it is, in the first hard moment, as a shock that goes through the heart, even the child of God does not see it otherwise.
Oh, it is such somber gazing into the hollowness and into the darkness of the valley of the shadow of Death, when we see one on whom our heart hung enter into that dreadful valley.
Death who carries off his prey before our eyes, and we who grieved and helpless must see him do it.
SO is the reality. The bitter reality in the visible. And it is cowardly to deceive yourself, when you hide that hard reality underneath funeral wreaths and display of flowers, or deem to minister comfort by generalities about a providential love of God.
There is no seriousness in this, it is lack of courage, when you take such a blind, to hide the hardness of death from yourself and from others.
You have prayed, and God has not heard. Your prayer notwithstanding, Death has overcome. Is then God not Almighty? Where then is that providential love, that He allowed Death to have his way, more still, that He sent Death to you, and abandoned your loved one to him?
No, confess, that Death is because of sin. Be pricked in your conscience. And acknowledge that God’s dreadful anger operated in that dying. So in the presence of your dead at least you can tremble before God’s holiness. But to prate of providential love, when God allows cruel Death to rob you of the dearest you had on earth, when you see the precious life fade before your eyes, perish and swallowed up, this is lying against your soul.
In the uprightness of your soul you can not do this.
This is playing with words on the brink of the grave.
BUT now comes God’s Word. And without detracting anything from that hard reality, that Word turns the whole matter around for you.
Altogether around.
Before your bodily eye it is so and not otherwise. But you also have an eye in your soul. An eye that is stone-blind, and catches no single beam of light, and sees nothing, until God converts you, and makes you spiritually seeing.
And then discloses itself before these eyes in your soul also a reality. But a reality that is the direct opposite, and which shows, not how Death swallows up life, but how in dying itself the mortal is swallowed up of life (2 Cor. 2, 4).
How is this possible? There is no one who can solve it. But it is possible and in Jesus it is so. In that Wondrous One Who Himself took hold of Death and compelled Death to let Him go through to glory, and held the way open behind Him, that undisturbed and unhindered by Death all His own should be permitted to follow after Him into glory.
Life, real life, is too mighty, than that it can remain bound in this earthly tabernacle. Here it can not spread its wings. And therefore in the end life must shake off this earthly, this mortal from itself, to go on to its higher reality. It must break itself loose from this mortal body. And that breaking loose is dreadful to behold. But then also life comes where it is destined to be. Then it unfolds itself in full majesty. And for this purpose life first had to swallow up the mortal.
BEFORE your eye, that from your soul gazes into eternity, the dead body does not lie as a token that Death has obtained a victory, but as a trophy of life.
It is the broken shell, and the very fact that the shell is broken, shows that life has now become free and breathes in higher atmosphere.
The brokenness of the body, otherwise so hard and cruel, is now token of liberation, visible, tangible proof that life has wrenched loose the mortal tie.
And that breaking itself loose from the mortal, now to unfold itself in glory, your dead himself could not do, and you can not do that, when once you yourself die; but that did, that doeth the Prince of Life, that does your Jesus, when there is life in you, and when in Him, in His life you are incorporated.
It is not your dead who here dies, and Jesus far distant, and your dead who now goes to Jesus. No, He was present. He did it. And when Death laughed you to scorn, as though he had conquered, soul-enchantingly your Savior smiled upon you, and showed you the crown, the palm-branch of victory.
HE who stands outside of this, is in a grievous predicament. He who does not believe, when he dies, perishes. Death holds him fast. And he who so sees his dead die, can only speak of comfort and of hope, with the self-deception of funeral-wreaths and hollow phrases. This makes the recklessness so terrible on the part of those who close their ears to the voice of the call of Jesus, and even seek with others to break down the beginnings of faith in Jesus.
Their waking in eternity shall be mortally distressing!
God’s children do not understand indeed by far in ordinary times, what grace has been accorded them, that they are enabled to believe, and, when they see their dear ones die, that they may know, that their beloved were incorporated in Jesus.
This does not indeed take away anxiety from illness, and hardness from dying, and the chill from the grave. The loss and forsakenness follow, and the wound in the heart must bleed.
But alongside and above that life in the visible with its woe and deep sorrows stands also that other reality, which is yet more certain, than what here makes you weep bitter tears, and from that reality sacred joy, heavenly peace pour out toward you. A perception that can be so vivid, that in you it becomes as it was in the soul of St. Paul, when he wrote: I would rather be absent from the body, and dwell with the Lord.
AND do not say, that there cleaves morbidity to such language of faith, because he who is disposed like this, becomes unfit for his task here below.
This is truly the case, when in your God and in your Jesus you worship merely holy Beings, Who are there to help you, to save you, and to bring you unto eternal life; when you want to be the central figure, and would have God’s holy counsel do its reckoning according unto you.
But such is not the case, when with your dead and with those who are still spared you, you know that, both in life and death, here and in glory, you exist alone for God’s sake and for the sake of His Holy Name.
He our Father and we His children; He the Lord, and we His menservants and His maidservants.
For then alone is life here good, and also for so long imperative duty, as here we work His work, and are permitted to labor at the task He gave us.
Then we are born to serve Him, and re-born for no other purpose than in the Son of His love to glorify Him.
Then He gives us faith, not to save us, but that in our blessedness He might make His own Name great.
Then is our life the Lord’s, whether we still remain here, or whether we enter eternity.
And then our dying, and that of our loved ones never comes otherwise than at that moment, and never otherwise than amid those circumstances, which He our God deemed necessary for the consummation of His counsel, and for the honor and praise of His Name.
And then freely confess, that so there is weeping of the evening and rejoicing of the morning in the same heart.
So intermingled is the inner life of every one who together with those that are his, wills to exist alone for his God.
A weeping by reason of the sharp pain which the wounded heart feels, and yet from that same heart a note of rejoicing and of praise going upward for what God has prepared for his dead, who went from him, and for what for this life is left him of comfort, of love and of holy calling.
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