Austin's Blog

We have not lost him. We know where Gabriel is. He has gone on ahead of us. Puritan writer John Flavel remarks, “The Christian religion does not allow Christians the liberty of expressing the death of their dear relatives by so hard a word as loss. They are not lost; they are sent before you.” He has been sent before us. While we never would’ve, could’ve, or should’ve imagined this would be our life, this is it now. He is home and we are now painfully waiting to get there. We are still on our journey; Gabe has made it home first. Randy Alcorn notes, “Those of us who are left behind will grieve that our loved ones have left home. In reality, however, our believing loved ones aren’t leaving home; they’re going home. They’ll be home before us.”

In time, we will go home to him as well. And once we get there, we will never part again. Augustine writes, “And you should not grieve as the heathen do who have no hope, because we have hope, based on the most assured promise, that as we have not lost our dear ones who have departed from this life but have merely sent them ahead of us, so we also shall depart and shall come to that life where, more than ever, their dearness to us will be proportional to the closeness we shared on earth and where we shall love them without fear of parting.” A part of the beauty of heaven is the lack of parting. Love is meant to last and it does in the end. It will in the end.

I think someone may have to introduce me to Gabriel all over again. Not because we won’t somehow recognize our loved ones in heaven. We don’t become more ignorant in God’s presence; we become more aware, more knowledgeable, more wise, and more understanding. Someone may have to reintroduce me again to my son because he will be so radiant, so beautiful, so stunningly excellent, so noble, so wonderful, and so alive for having been in the presence of Love himself. John the beloved disciple writes in 1 John 3:2, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” Again, John Flavel writes, “If your relatives sleep in Jesus, they will appear ten thousand times more lovely in the morning of the resurrection than they ever were in the world. What is the most perfect, purest beauty of mortals compared to the incomparable beauty of the saints in the resurrection?” We are ready for our resurrected eyes to see our beautiful son once again.