My Strength & My Shield / psm28:7

27 - Loss or Victory?

I think sometimes that when Satan can't attack us head on, the snake that he is leads him to attack the innocent - our children. Three such attacks have occurred this month in our church family with parents losing their children. It doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem fair. It makes me hug my daughter a little tighter and a little more often, not wanting to take even one single moment of her life for granted. 

I think about these children - one so young, just after entering this world; yet, he had an impact on his family! Even though I didn't know the family, I know how I was devastated when I had a miscarriage. I can't imagine losing a child so quickly after the first breaths of life are breathed. How does a parent ever recover from that? 

The other children (ages seven and fifteen), despite their disease and disability, they showed courage and contentment with who they were and the hard lives that were theirs. They were examples to everyone who knew them, and while we as adults often find ourselves complaining about the least little inconveniences in our lives, these children faced life-threatening issues with strength and conviction of winning what God promised them. 

Some might say that in the end, they all lost. Their parents feel their loss daily. But did they really lose? No. They've all won. While with us, they were loved and cared for by their dear families and friends. Now, they are free from the physical chains that bound them within bodies that failed and didn't function as they were designed. They are free from the wheelchairs that held them and the medicines that sustained them. Did they lose? By no means... for they've won and are victorious for eternity! 

I have no doubt where they now reside. I have no doubt whose hands first touched them as they stepped into a kingdom designed with them in mind. I have no doubt they impacted countless lives while on earth, and are now impacting even more in heaven. 

Thank you, Lord, that you placed them in our lives - even if it was for too brief a time. 

[In memory of Cade, Liam and Matt.]

"Lord," Martha said to Jesus, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha answered, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. (John 11:21-26)