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Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Today's Frontline Devotion Saturday, June 21, 2003 "The Last and Worst Enemy" |
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Frontline Devotion for Saturday, June 21, 2003 By Fritz Foltz
After visiting the dying, both churched and unchurched for four decades, I decided that those who regularly attend church cope far better with death. I think the reason is simply because they cannot ignore it as so many in our society do. Each church year during Lent and Holy Week we struggle with the death of Jesus, God’s son. And then in Easter we proclaim God in his love overcomes the power of that death to separate him from his child.
As we relive the death and resurrection of Jesus, we find ourselves a part of the story. We begin Lent remembering, “ Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return”. We use the dust to mark ourselves with the sign of baptism, proclaiming we have become like adopted sons and daughters, that God’s love extends even to us. God refuses to allow death to separate us from him as well.
Death’s nature is most clearly exposed when it takes a child from a parent. When Jesus restored children to their parents after death savagely torn them apart, he made clear this is not how God intended things to be. He corrected the defect. And in his action was the promise of a completely restored creation in the future when the last enemy, death, will be defeated, and love will flow eternally unobstructed.
Of course, death strikes in many forms. Its pain overwhelms us whenever a relationship is severed, whenever the future of love seems impossible, whenever hearts are broken. . But if God can heal the worst, a parent’s lost of child, surely he can heal the rest as well.
Let us pray: O God, grant us always the faith to address you as Father, that we might live certain of your love and without fear. And enable us to see others as your children and our sisters and brothers. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen
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