Lucy Brooks went to be with Christ (which is “far better” than life here — Philippians 1.23) on Sunday, May 11.  It was Mother’s Day, and she was surrounded by her family as this world slipped away and the veil that conceals the next world was drawn back. 

Lucy died well.  She died trusting in Christ. 

Only in Christ can we weep but also hope in the face of death — as Christ himself, in the eleventh chapter of John, wept but also hoped in the face of death.

Only in Christ can we look at death realistically and with clear eyes — letting go of our silly pretenses with which we deceive ourselves into thinking that this won’t ever happen to us.

Only in Christ can we put away the smiley–faced sunny cliches that people often use to plaster over the face of death.  Christians are not called to swoop in with a bumper sticker when death strikes.  Christians are called to name death for what it is.  It is an enemy.  But it is a defeated enemy.  1 Corinthians 15.16: “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

Only in Christ can we sing in the face of death — as we did at Lucy’s memorial service yesterday.  We sang about how Christ is one day going to make all things new and beautiful again.  Including Lucy.  We sang, knowing that even as we said farewell to Lucy yesterday, we who are in Christ will one day see her again — when this world has at last been renewed, according to Christ’s promise.

“I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.  Do you believe this?”
—the words of Jesus the Christ, recorded in John 11.25

“And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’”
—the apostle John’s vision of the world renewed, Revelation 21.5

“No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.”
—the most beautiful words in the Bible (in my humble opinion), Revelation 22.3