an actual day, real enough

For a day is coming--

an actual day, real enough

that it could be marked on a calendar

if we had access to such mysteries--

when we will be eternally freed from death's presence.

Imagine the feast and the festival

we might attend that day,

the songs, the stories, the

thanksgiving and adoration, the

creative expression in art and poetry and dance,

the jubilation and celebration when

that liberation is finally achieved and

the presence and the glory of God illuminates

the landscape, and each of us,

for the first time in our lives, are

unselfconscious and without fear,

newly awakened to the beauty, the wonder,

the glory of God revealed, and

reflected in his people and in his creation.

Lord Jesus, come. Haste that day of wholeness and joy.

Now in these remaining days between

the great breaking of death's power

once and for all at the cross, and

the destruction of all last vestiges of death's presence

when Christ's kingdom is finally fully established,

each of us must still reckon with our own mortality.

We must still grieve.

We must still learn what it means

to mourn with those who mourn.

We are a people called to love sacrificially. And

love is always sacrificial--partly because

anything we love we will lose in this life.

There is no love of others that does not necessarily

open us to loss, wound, and grief.

But we do not grieve without hope.

Douglas Kaine McKelvey