Home for Christmas
December 1, 2001 - "I shall miss Mother this Christmas," my friend, a clerk in a shop, told me. The clerk's mother had died recently, and this would be the first Christmas without her.
by Ruth Bell Graham
When her mother was in the hospital, the doctor had told the family to stay out of her room so that she could rest.
The clerk said, "So I stayed in the hall, waiting and listening. Finally I could stand it no longer, and I went in to her room.
"Mother said, 'I thought you'd never come!' "
Blinking back tears, the clerk added, with a smile, "You know, I think that they'll be the first words she will say to me when I get to heaven!"
The Bible says, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints."(1)
I often have looked at death from my own perspective and not from God's point of view. Just as "there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth,"(2) so too there is joy in heaven over each child of God who goes Home.
And that is what my friend, the clerk, really was saying.
PRIVACY
