Today, I went to the celebration of life for a young woman I had known since before she was born. What a precious, life-filled person she was all her short life. I sat in a room filled with people who were mourning her: her parents at whose wedding I was officiant, both sets of grandparents, her younger sister, lots of friends and others as well. I came to that space and moment a one who grieves, as one seeking comfort and hope myself. These are reflections from afterwards:
We come to moments like this holding different ways of speaking about what happens beyond death.
Some of us speak of heaven as a place we will one day go,
a place where we will meet Jesus face to face.
And some of us experience Christ as present even now—
in love, in connection, in the bonds that don’t seem to break, even in death.
I’ve come to hold both of those as part of a larger mystery.
That we are living in what Scripture sometimes points to as an “already and not yet.”
Already, love has shaped a life that cannot be undone.
Already, this young life continues to live in the hearts and relationships she formed.
Already, we are held in something deeper than we can fully explain.
And not yet…
not yet do we see fully.
Not yet is the grief gone.
Not yet has love finished what love is doing.
So whether we speak of one day meeting again,
or of a connection that even now continues,
I trust that both are reaching toward the same truth—
that love does not end.
And that whatever it means to be held in God,
she is held—fully, completely, and in peace.
Infinitely Precious 