Sorrow and a Savior

Our family has been homesteading across the country these last few years, and we've been largely removed from many of the normal ups and downs a family experiences in it's development. One of these many progressions has finally caught up with us. Earlier this week my beloved wife's grandmother passed away. This is the great matriarch of her family that has born the central role of stability for the family for quite a few decades after severe tragedy in the family many long years ago. She had already buried before her, husband, mother, and several children. My wife's father is now the lone head of the family since her passing. My children had met her several times and we do have many pictures of them together despite the infrequency of visits to the area.

There are many things that one can think about on the passing of a family member. We have already looked at various pictures to refresh our memories of our time together, and my wife has spoken with various members of the family receiving support and offering condolences for our inability to come for a funeral. We want to remember all of the good things that we enjoyed, a proper and a natural function of grief, but we also have the opportunity to review the things that brought us into this horrible mess too.

My family and I had a discussion, over dinner last night, about the cause of our ultimate journey to death. We remembered that death is the result of sin, and that sin has permeated every fabric of the world since our father Adam.

“Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” Romans 5:12

We are all going to die one day, because we all have sin, and sin is a result of our incipient rebellion against our heavenly Creator. Adam brought this upon us, but we are all like him, and will continue to abound in our own way of living because we each have an independent rebellious heart.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9

This is a terrible condition and our degenerating bodies, minds, and souls are the fruit of this condition. The situation is magnified since this rebellion is against our Creator!

“I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give to every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” Jeremiah 17:10

Death is the judgement of a holy God against a wicked creation.

Our lone answer comes in the form of a baby, born in a manger, in the town of Bethlehem. A baby whose birth we celebrate in the very near future.

“She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Matthew 1:21

So as we remember the memory of our deceased and the season we rapidly approach, let us remember together our only hope, for:

“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1:29