Easter Loss and Celebration

We came home after church on Easter and I went to a lovely ladies’ tea party outside Cloverdale.  Rick and Travis stayed home to enjoy one another company’s, and I offered no apologies for abandoning them on this special celebration day.   My friend Loretta has tea parties that would make Kate Middleton plead to come. 

When I came home, Rick was sitting somberly at the kitchen counter.  “Marion died last night.”  My first reaction was “What?!”  We had been half-expecting the news, but still it was a shock to our hearts.  We’ve both known this lovely lady since childhood. She was my junior high Sunday school teacher.  (I called her Mrs. Bonde back then.)  Rick and went to swim parties at her house (Her son, David, was best man at our wedding and Godfather to our three children).  We were going to her ninety-fifth birthday celebration a few weeks ago, but she fell and broke her pelvis and ended up in the hospital.  When David called, he made it a point that the gathering was not cancelled, only postponed.

I expected Marion to live forever.

It took a few seconds of shock before it dawned on me Marion is more alive now than she’s ever been — or any of us can are in these earthly bodies of ours.  The part that grieves me is I can’t get in a car and drive a couple of hours to see her or call her on the telephone anymore. 

The timing of her homecoming struck me, too.  Easter week-end!  Some might say, “Oh, that will spoil the holiday…”  Just the opposite.  I have another cause of celebration.  Marion closed her eyes in the body that had become a burden to her, opened her eyes in perfect health and found herself in the Presence of the Lord she loved and served all her life.  She’s seeing Jesus face-to-face right now!  

And close by, waiting to greet her, is another: her husband, won to the Lord by her love and faithfulness. 

God is good all the time.  His plan is perfect.