In the last week, I received word that two friends whom I love have died.  They were both 69 years old.  They were both good guys.  I spent a measure of time with both and knew them well, although have not been around them a lot for the last ten years.

Maybe it is the stage of life that I have come to, but my friends are now dying.  I do not like it.  I reached out to both families and become acquainted again with vivid grief.  Echoing in my ear is Hebrews 13:14, “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.”

No city on earth is permanent.  Everything is temporary.  While that notion helps you lay hold of each new day with joy and live full tilt, it also brings a wave of sadness to realize we are giving up what we will never have again.  I’ll not have the privilege to be around Romie again and be exposed afresh to that quiet, dollar cost averaging faithfulness that characterized my experiences with him.  I’ll not laugh again on earth with Tony, whose laugh would send us both into next level laughter just to hear him take flight.  You can laugh like that when you’ve been forgiven and your erring heart has been all healed up and you are now a lover of Christ.  All of those experiences were impermanent.  We knew it at the time, but did not feel it in the moment. 

If you lose enough friends along this good way as followers of Jesus, you start contemplating heaven’s promise more and more.  That hope has a sanctifying effect on our souls, but it comes at the cost of loss and grief.  No permanence here.  It is all like a morning vapor that is soon gone as the sun comes up (James 4:14).  But here, we are all vividly acquainted with the impermanence of everything. 

But that brings us hurting to our rock-solid hope centered in the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord.  On that first Easter morning, His tomb was empty.  That artifact beckons us forward with wide-eyed hope in what is to come.  To absent our body, will be to be present with our Lord! (2 Corinthians 5:8).  That city to which we trek is eternal in the heavens and will descend to earth to bring about an eternity of heaven brought to earth (Revelation 21:1-2).  We are looking for that city that is to come. 

Death seems so permanent.  But for the follower of Jesus, it is temporary.  Our eternity will be a transition to be with our Lord, who loved us and gave Himself for us.  When Dallas Willard was dying, his biographer notes that a friend came to spend the night to help him through and give his wife a break.  It was a rugged night.  At one point his friend was overcome by what was going on.  Willard recognized his struggle.  He reached over and patted him on the knee and said, “This is not the end.  This is just the end of the beginning.” 

Death for the one having no response to God’s love in Christ will usher them to what they had grown accustom to in life, a God-less eternity apart from Him.  But for the believer in Jesus, death hurts.  There is real loss, but it does not get the last word.  As Don Carson coined, “This is nothing a good resurrection can’t fix!”  Amen.  In Christ, the seeming impermanence of life and permanence of death, will give way to our characterization of the loss of that believer as merely temporary.  We will be “…with them” (1 Thessalonians 4:17) again.  In that sense, one could say that the impermanence of permanence is…only temporary.  What a hope belongs to the follower of Jesus!