Up, Up, and Away
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
“Instead of dreading the time when we will leave this world to go to the Father, we should be longing for the hour of our emancipation.” – C.H. Spurgeon
I absolutely love the phrasing that Charles Spurgeon uses in today’s quote. Instead of mourning our impending death, he urges us to celebrate our imminent emancipation.
The Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines the word “emancipate” as “to free from restraint, control, or the power of another; to free from bondage.” Sounds like cause for a celebration to me!
Imagine, if you will, a slave during the Civil War learning that President Lincoln had just signed the Emancipation Proclamation but refusing to accept his newly granted freedom. Likewise, can you picture a slave choosing to stay in bondage after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee had signed the articles of surrender at Appomattox Courthouse?
I have two close friends whose fathers have been ill for quite some time. One recently passed away and the other remains in hospice. Fortunately, both men know the Lord and so, the first one is already eternally free and the second is about to be liberated from what Paul calls “this body of death” (see Romans 7:24).
My friend, no one looks forward to the process of death. Like Woody Allen famously said, “I don’t fear death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” However, because we know what awaits us on the “other side,” we need not treat death as an enemy. On the contrary, it is the last hurdle we mist cross before being united with God in heaven forever… in a place too glorious for our limited minds to fully grasp or comprehend… where there is no sin, sorrow, death, pain, or tears.
In Spurgeon’s words, “We are not called down to the grave but up to the skies. Our heaven-born spirits should long for their native air.”
“For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.” Romans 8:22-23 (NKJV)
“For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Philippians 3:20 (NKJV)
- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President
