“When The Lord Will Come Again!”

“When The Lord Will Come Again!”(Thes.4:13-18).
At the death of somebody my village women sing in dirge, “Yi nu mi mù!” A loose translation can be “it is finished with him/her;” not in the sense which Jesus pronounced on the cross that “It is finished.” Jesus meant, his earthly work was accomplished, while my women folk mean that all of earthly life is ended for the departed.
For some people and other religions, beliefs about afterlife is 1meaningless speculation. We remind ourselves that it was not very different with some segments of Judaism. The Sadduccees did not believe in an afterlife. The dead cannot praise God(Ps.115:17, Is.38:18).
In the same way some Thessalonians misunderstood Paul, thinking that all believers would live until the return of Christ.
In resting their worries Paul said he didn’t want them “to be ignorant about those who fall asleep or to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope.”
To fall asleep is a metaphor for death. A colleague of blessed memory was fond of preaching that if you do not want to die, then don’t sleep. Because sleep is mini death. For Christians death is sleep because of the resurrection hope. Our conviction is that the dead shall arise; so even in death there is hope of life. We do not have any reason to bury ourselves in grief for the demise of a believer like the unbelievers who have no hope.
Christ will come again, “and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.And so we will be with the Lord forever.”
Paul says we should encourage each other with these words.
While we are still alive we should thank God for finding us worthy of this day. We should be thankful that Christ is alive. We shouldn’t mourn our departed loved ones as people without hope of the resurrection. We should not be scared of death, we should rather live in the consciousness of being mortal.
Let us remain confident in this glorious hope that one day “we will be with the Lord forever!”
Weekend prayer: Heavenly Father take away from us the scare of death and thank you for the assurance that one day we will be with the Lord forever. Amen!
Have a blessed weekend! Peace be with you!
Rev Babila Fochang.