No doubt at all

Lift up your eyes

“If a man die, shall he live again?” That haunting question comes to us more and more. Let me share with you a true story.

It was without doubt the most trying moment of the young minister’s life. What could he possibly say to the big blue-eyed little fellow who had just come to ask, “What happens to you when you die?” I don’t know. Neither did he.

A car had struck the little boy’s puppy and he had witnessed it. His grandmother whom he loved had died two months before and now this whole thing about death was bothering him. His mother had dropped him off at the minister’s study and there it was, plain as day, “What happens to you when you die?”

The young minister had no real good eight-year-old response. Truth of the matter, he didn’t have a good twenty- five-year-old response for he, too, had that same need.

As the two of them sat and talked it occurred to him that he did have a way of answering his little friend that could at least get them started. He didn’t know who wrote it, but this is what he read to his little friend:

“I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, ‘There. She is gone.’

“Gone where? Gone from my sight—that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her; for just as someone at my side says, ‘There. She is gone.’ there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, ‘There she comes.’ And that is dying.”

The little boy looked up and squeezed his teddy bear. Past a single tear he said, “Do you think my little dog and Grandma are on that boat?”

Just then the young minister thought of his father, his grandma and so many, many others who had touched his life and then joined the communion of saints. “No doubt about it,” he said, as they hugged, “No doubt about it at all.”

Clyde Nichols is a retired minister, having served First Christian Church in Temple for 27 years as senior minister. He is the author of three books of devotionals and writes a religious column for several Texas newspapers, including The Reporter.