Just a shell

We were there once again at the grave side. Another month had passed. I’ve tried to visit once a month, but don’t bring the kids as often. Especially before the grave marker went in, there was nothing to see but dirt, weeds, and bugs. Nothing pretty about that, and not really where any of us long to hang out. Yet life has brought us there… to this place of seeing the ugly all around, but always longing to find some beauty in it.

So this morning, like in all of the other mornings that have come before and come after, I chose to focus on the hope that we have in the promise of the resurrection, and not in what I currently see. The words almost leap from my mouth as I try to help the kids understand it too. “Guys,” I say through my tears, “this is not Daddy. This is not where he is. We celebrate his life here, we remember how amazing he was and we cry because we miss him so much. But all this ugly – this is not him, and this is not where his story ends. It’s where his old body lies, but he doesn’t need that body any more. He’s perfectly happy and been given victory with a beautiful new forever that has begun in Heaven.”

"It’s just like an old shell you find at the beach,” I continue to explain. “The sea creature that used to live in that shell no longer needs it. He’s happily found a new home that fits him better now.”

And right then, my L comes running over holding these two little snail shells.

He gets it. And as I look around the cemetery, this ugly place filled with weeds and bugs and buried corpses, I realize that there are these little snail shells everywhere. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, with nothing inside, reminding me that day and every day I visit that this is not all there is to life, and of the beauty to come. A reminder that there are glimpses of beauty that can always be found when I’m dedicated to looking for them.

I honestly don’t know how anyone gets through something like this without the assurance of Heaven. I cling to that assurance every moment of every day. I long for the day when I myself no longer need this current shell of a body, complete with its constant sicknesses and weaknesses and fears. But until then, this frail body forces me to turn to my fully strong Savior for its strength. 

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. -1 Corinthians 15:51-58