Grieving with hope: Chris Sherrod (uncle)

In John 14:19 Jesus promised, “Because I live, you also will live.”

- We grieve with hope because then we will see Jesus Christ – the hope of glory, our all-surpassing, all-satisfying Treasure, the Author and Finisher of our Faith; He is our LIFE – “To live is Christ and to die is gain!” (Phil 1:21). Colossians 3:4 says, “When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory!” The book of Isaiah was one of Abby’s favorites and just the other day she asked about the passage where Isaiah sees the Lord… “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke” (Isaiah 6:1-4). What a glorious picture – Abby and her Papaw, healed and whole, dancing and worshipping around the Throne, singing, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise, for ever and ever!” (Rev 5:12-13)

- We grieve with hope because Jesus Himself now has Abby in His arms. When Abby was eleven, Ty took her out on a date and gave her a Promise Ring. He said to her, “I am promising you that I will love you and cherish you and protect you. And I will do my best to bring you up in the training and instruction of the Lord. And one day when someone comes along that I can completely trust to love you and cherish you and protect you, then I will pass my responsibility on to him.” Wednesday morning, as Abby’s body lay in the emergency room, Ty noticed her hand with the Promise Ring still on it resting out of the sheet. And he realized at that moment that he had kept his promise and that Someone now had her in His arms who was perfectly strong and perfectly able to love and protect her and hold her forever. And so, as he slipped this very ring off her finger, Ty leaned over and whispered, “You are beautiful. Jesus has you now.”

So yes, we mourn, we weep, we miss our sweet Abby – but we do not mourn like those who have no hope. And we also rejoice because of what she left us. We rejoice in her life that brought joy and encouragement through her compassionate and servant’s heart, and her eyes that saw the needs of others and so she spoke words of life and Truth to us. Her hunger and thirst for righteousness reminds us to seek what matters. Her radiance – even in trials – was a reflection of her King, and Abby’s life was adorned with the precious jewels of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight (1 Peter 3:4).But some of you here today can’t rejoice. You are mourning without hope. Death for you is not a doorway ushering you into the presence of your Savior and the Treasure you have valued above all things and longed to see. Death for you is a dead end, an uncertain, vague, unknown event. Let me tell you that you have cause to fear death. Hebrews 9:27 says that each of us are “destined to die once and after that to face judgment.” And God is a perfect, holy and righteous Judge who holds us accountable for every thought, motive, action and careless word. So here is our dilemma: God’s holiness demands perfect obedience, but we don’t have perfect obedience. We are rightfully under the wrath of God. When Isaiah saw God’s glory, he was immediately overwhelmed with his own sinfulness (“Woe to me!” v. 5).
But there is still hope for you; God provided a solution: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rm 5:8) and Christ became sin for us (2 Cor 5:21), taking God’s wrath for our sin upon Himself and providing perfect righteousness for all who would believe – the perfect obedience that I couldn’t offer! For those who trust Christ, we can say, “God did not appoint us to suffer wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess 5:9), and also, “there is now condemnation for those who are in Christ” (Rm 8:1).

Psalm 16:8-11 says, “I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay. You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”

On Abby’s tombstone there will be two dates – her birth date and her homecoming date. In between those dates will be a dash. That dash represents the Christ-centered life Abby lived on earth for an audience of One. So here are two crucial questions: 1.) What are you doing with your dash? Are you chasing what matters or chasing what is meaningless in God’s Kingdom? Abby chose, for example, to invest in God’s Word and prayer. She chose to use e-mail, Facebook and letters as a way to spread the message of God’s love to everyone she knew. 2.) When your second date arrives, will it be a glorious homecoming and joyful reunion, or a fearful moment of judgment because you didn’t accept God’s free offer of forgiveness and righteousness through Jesus Christ?

And so, because of Christ, we trade…our loss for life, tragedy for Truth, sorrow for joy, weakness for strength, heartache for hope and rest, fear and discouragement for courage, devastation and despair for deliverance, turmoil and anger for peace and grace, emptiness for fullness in Christ, sickness and brokenness for healing, guilt for forgiveness and confidence, loss of control for trust in God’s sovereign and perfect plan.

Thanks be to God, we have been rescued! 1 Corinthians 15:51-57 says, “We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed — in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet… ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin [which has been paid for!], and the power of sin is the law [which has been perfectly fulfilled in Christ!]. Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”