| Things to Live For |
Chapter 19 |
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There is yet another sense in which our departed Christian friends sty with us after they have vanished from earth. We know that they are still living, that they still remember us and still love us, though we are in a sense separated from them. Love is stronger than death; and love binds us and them in close and holy bonds, though they have passed over the valley, and we yet stay on this side. Through the longest years this tie is not destroyed. We do not forget our friends; they do not forget us. Thus we have them still, and never quite lose them in the years that we have to walk without them. Then by and by we shall have them again in blessed reality, when death touches us in turn, and we pass over into the same glorious joy in which they are dwelling.
A large part of the blessed hope of heaven is its reunions. The Bible gives us many glimpses of the glory and beauty of the home that awaits us. We are told of streets of gold, of gates of pearl, of a river of the water of life, of a crystal sea – all that earth can find of splendor is brought into the picture to heighten our conception of the glories of heaven. But that which makes heaven dear to those who have loved ones there is not so much the promise of all this splendor of beauty, as the hope of again getting with the dear friends who are in the midst of all this incomparable beauty. As the Rev. W.C. Gannet puts it, “the dear togetherness” is the sweetest thing in the hope of heaven.
“I dreamed of Paradise–and still,
Though sun lay soft on vale and hill,
And trees were green and rivers bright,
The one dear thing that made delight
By sun or stars or Eden weather,
Was just that we two were together.
“I dreamed of heaven–with God so near!
The angels trod the shining sphere,
And each was beautiful; the days
Were choral work, were choral praise:
And yet in heaven’s far shining weather
The best was still–we were together!”
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