For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
What happens to us when we die? There are all kinds of opinions out there about where people go when they die. Some believe that dead souls float away into nothingness, others believe in re-incarnation and that dead souls return in a different form. Christians believe that upon death, our spirits return to the Father. God has a clear plan for his children. We do not have to guess where we go, when we die.
A little while ago, I came upon a story that sort of captures God’s plan for humanity. The school system in a large city had a program to help children keep up with their schoolwork during stays in the city’s hospitals. One day a teacher who was assigned to the program received a routine call asking her to visit a particular child. She took the child’s name and room number and talked briefly with the child’s regular class teacher. “We’re studying nouns and adverbs in his class now,” the regular teacher said, “and I’d be grateful if
you could help him understand them, so he doesn’t fall too far behind.”
The hospital program teacher went to see the boy that afternoon. No one had mentioned to her that the boy had been badly burned and was in great pain. Upset at the sight of the boy, she stammered as she told him, “I’ve been sent by your school to help you with nouns and adverbs.” When she left, she felt she hadn’t accomplished much.
But the next day, a nurse asked her, “What did you do to that boy?” The teacher felt she must have done something wrong and began to apologize. “No, no,” said the nurse. “You don’t know what I mean. We’ve been worried about that little boy, but ever since yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. He’s fighting back, responding to treatment. It’s as though he’s decided to live.”
Two weeks later the boy explained that he had completely given up hope until the teacher arrived. Everything changed when he came to a simple realization. He expressed it this way: “They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy, would they?”
Perhaps this is how God’s love works in our lives. Like that little boy we were scarred and isolated from God by sin, with no hope of making it. Sin condemned us to eternal death. God in his mercy sent Jesus Christ, not to teach us nouns and numbers but verbs and a number. Verbs like “loved, gave, believes, shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
And numbers like one. That one died for all and therefore all died (2 Corinthians
5:14); and by one sacrifice he has made perfect those who are being made holy (Hebrews 10:14); that this same God has appointed but one day to die, and after that the judgement (Hebrews 9:27), and finally that one day he is coming back to take his people to be with him.
Surely God wouldn’t send his One and Only Begotten Son to work on verbs and a number with a dying and hopeless humanity, would he?
Chaplain Joan
