Friday, August 17, 2012

Death to a Mom and to Israel

I just learned that a friend's mom, aged 92, went home to her Savior. "It was a powerful day of graduation complete with joy, celebration, sadness, tears and a whole lot of gratefulness," he wrote. 

What a lot of life she's seen. What a lot of eternity awaits her. And such a contrast between the two.

Yesterday I read again about some of the hate and stupidity in the world (Ahmadinejad vomitting that Israel's existence is "an insult to all humanity": http://news.yahoo.com/iran-israels-existence-insult-humanity-093922735.html) and an Islamic "intellectual" claiming that Jews consume the blood of children believing "that this brings them close to their false god, Yahweh”: http://freebeacon.com/saudi-cleric-questions-holocaust/). I wanted to despair.

Admittedly, tiredness and various other challenges don't make world conflicts seem smaller, but all-defining.

Thank God for the transcendent perspective His Word provides. This morning I read these words from Isaiah 25:
On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare
a banquet of aged wine--the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces;
he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.
One day the days of this present earth, which "reels like a drunkard...so heavy upon it is the guilt of its rebellion" (Is 24:20), will be swallowed up by an eternity that will render all else but a faint shadow of a memory!