The righteous hath hope in his death. Proverbs 14:32
“If there were no death, sin would never die. Through death alone is sin restrained, and there is no other way of getting rid of it.
Such gracious and wholesome punishment God gives to us, that sin is slain through death. Therefore we should receive death with joyful hearts and bear it as coming from a gracious Father, as the faithful do. For our Father’s goodness is so great that even death must serve to slay and to uproot all misfortune.
Therefore death is nothing but sheer grace, yes, even the beginning of life.
For since it ministers to the restoration of the soul, our bodily system and all that is associated with it, such as illness, danger, pain, and labor, must also serve for our good, so that we could desire nothing better.
For Adam must die and decay before Christ can completely rise and that begins with the life of repentance and is perfected through death. Therefore death is a wholesome thing to all who believe in Christ, for all that is born of Adam death brings to decay and dust, that Christ alone may abide in us.”
Martin Luther
We buried Ebenezer today. Pastor Berndt did a short rite and blessed his remains. Phil placed his little box into the vault in the ground. The frozen winter ground. It should never have been that way, to have to put your baby’s remains in the ground.
This world is broken. Death is our enemy. Yes, victory is ours over this brokenness and this enemy but we who are alive here on this earth can’t see or feel it yet. We grieve the death of our child, we grieve what sin has done to mortals, we grieve what we will never have with our son in this lifetime. We grieve all that we have lost here.
But we do not grieve without hope.
What God ordains is good. Even this. In death our precious baby has been given grace and life. Though a sinner, he has been saved by Christ from his sins. He will never know sin the way his parents do or his brothers and sisters do. I, his mother, will never sin against him nor he against me. This is a soothing comfort in my weariness. Mercy that cheers and warms me on this cold and bitter day.
What God ordains is always good:
He is my friend and Father;
He suffers naught to do me harm
Though many storms may gather.
Now I may know
Both joy and woe;
Some day I shall see clearly
That He has loved me dearly.
What God ordains is always good:
Though I the cup am drinking
Which savors now of bitterness,
I take it without shrinking.
For after grief
God gives relief,
My heart with comfort filling
And all my sorrow stilling.
What God ordains is always good:
This truth remains unshaken.
Though sorrow, need, or death be mine,
I shall not be forsaken.
I fear no harm,
For with His arm
He shall embrace and shield me;
So to my God I yield me.
