| Things to Live For |
Chapter 17 |
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Christ comforts in bereavement by showing us what that which we call death really is to the Christian. If we could see what it is that happens to our beloved one when he leaves us, we could not weep. There is a beautiful story of a boy whose young sister was dying. He had heard that if he could secure but a single leaf from the tree of life that grew in the garden of God, the illness could be healed. He set out to find the garden, and implored the angel sentinel to let him have one leaf. The angel asked the boy if he could promise that his sister should never be sick anymore if his request were granted, and that she should never be unhappy, nor do wrong, nor be cold or hungry, nor be treated harshly. The boy said he could not promise. Then the angel opened the gate a little way, bidding the child to look into the garden for a moment, to have one glimpse of its beauty.
“Then, if you still wish it,” said the angel, “I will myself ask the King for a leaf from the tree of life to heal your sister.”
The Child looked in; and, after seeing all the wondrous beauty and blessedness within the gates, he said softly to the angel, “I will not ask for the leaf now. There is no place in all this world so beautiful as that. There is no friend so kind as the Angel of Death. I wish he would take me too.”
If we could look in at the gate through which our loved ones pass when they leave us, we should be comforted. “Absent from the body,” they are “at home with the Lord.” Dying is translation; it is passing into blessed life.
“Life, like a dome of many colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.”
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