Guest post: Returning to dust |

My Great Loves is a blog I came across on WordPress Reader. This military wife and mother lost her darling first born son, ‘Gift’, age 12 in a tragic accident. She blogs anonymously about her ‘loves’ – her husband and children, her grief and family life. I have been moved by her touching honesty and the way she blogs about how her faith has been her strength. I find her faith inspiring and she kindly agreed to write something for me about how death is not the end.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return

In the beginning there was a tree. This tree was the source of our departure from Eden. But not the tree you are thinking of.

Adam and Eve were removed from Eden because if they ate from the Tree of Life we would be separated from our loving God. Forever.

And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.
He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”
Genesis 3:22

At first that doesn’t sound so bad, does it? But just think for a moment. What *IF* we did live forever?

Remember, this is moments after God has found out that Adam and Eve disobeyed and ate from the Tree of Life, and after he has passed down judgement that we will need to work [I could do an entire post on just that part; how He gave us work to give us purpose…because in Eden our purpose was to be with God and love him and work also, but not toil like we do here… but I digress].

If we eat from the Tree of Life, we will live FOREVER, eternally separated from God. Just the thought of that disturbs me so much. Here on earth we have absolutely no concept of this reality because this earth is still our Father’s world. He sent his son down here to save us from ourselves.

Death is not a punishment!

What a relief! Our return to dust brings us back to our original purpose: to be in God’s presence and glorify Hm.

In our dying, we are reunited. But it wasn’t a part of the original plan.

In Eden, we were to care for things and be with God. This means that death is wholly unnatural and painful. Especially for those of us who have had to let go, but it is not the end.

If we believe in the saving grace of God, then death become our reward for a race well run. How long or short that race was is irrelevant. The second we cease to be here, we are there, greeted by the heavenly host, escorted to the sanctuary where we will get to bow down and praise God.

We will be where all the right things will be said. All the things that we carried as hurts here will be gone and we will hear God, our Father, telling us what He wants us to hear, what we have been longing to hear our entire lives. “Well done my good and faithful servant”.

I can honestly say that I would do almost anything to have had the outcome of Gift’s accident turn out differently. But I wouldn’t bring him back from paradise. I miss him so much. I have a deep wounds that people can’t see and that won’t heal until I am in Heaven too. This wound won’t always be raw. Even now there are moments when it can be touched, metaphorically speaking. But it will always be there.

Right now, I think back on all the things I did wrong as a parent, and continue to do wrong. I say things I don’t mean. My tone of voice comes across as hurtful. I lose my patience. But my Gift, my first born, my beloved, his body is returning to dust. And he is standing in the throne room of the Almighty. He is in Paradise. Gift is getting to hear Love’s pure voice saying to him: ‘well done’. I am not beyond that grace either. Thank God.