Joy In The Passing

He had spent a lifetime building his business. He remembered as though it were yesterday turning over the first shovel of dirt before the construction began. It had been a vibrant and fulfilling business, one that afforded him a good life and wonderful memories. 

Today, he stood and watched as his beloved office building came crashing to the ground. So many memories, so many good time, so many hard fought victories flashed before his eyes as the structure heaved and gave way to the explosion that brought it to a final end. 

And he could not have been happier, because his faithful old office building, worn out and worn down by the passage of time and years of productivity, was giving way to a new structure that would carry his business into a new era. The old was gone and the new had come. The passing was not a time of sorrow but of joy. 

In my work as an Arkansas Hospice chaplain, I daily sit with with people who, by age or disease, are watching as their bodies are giving way day by day. They know that their old house is passing and about to crumble around them. But most look forward to that passing away with joy. They smile at the prospect of being freed from their old, deteriorating house. They know they have a new and better in the making. 

As Paul put it: "For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands" (2 Cor 5:1). As Chrstians, our passing is not the end, it is a new beginning - the beginning of our eternal life in Glory with a new and glorified body. 

So what else but joy could be found in the passing from an old or diseased body to a new and glorified one?  Growing old and gray or giving way to a edge ratio disease process ought not worry the child of God, both are evidence of glory in the making and should produce joy in the passing. Jus' Sayn.