Dearest brother, we rejoice to have known you, but more so that you were known to Jesus, who kept you faithful to that great end. You have run the race, and beaten us all.

The last words of a brother to be considered in the context of the first words that are offered to those being ushered into the eternal presence of their Lord

His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’
—Matthew 25:21

“Nice to meet you again, I’ll meet you guys soon.”

His last words to us—my fiancé and myself—were tinged with humor and wrapped in an inside joke. How fitting. How true to his spirit of joy, warmth, and of a loving and true friend, brother, and fellow saint.

And ironically, a double-edged sword. Fitting because they reflected who he was in the every day, and fitting because they prophesied who he would, in the next half hour, become—a graduate of the Church militant to the Church triumphant; no longer bound by his earthly body, but a soul joined to the Father in Heaven; unable to meet us here on earth again soon, but still also promising to meet us soon (yes, soon, somehow, someway, for all things are soon) in a newer, holier, and better way, when we are reunited to him in glory.

So often do we who are Reformed speak of the Church militant, where we are, and the Church triumphant, where our brother and so many other saints who have gone before us are. So often do we speak of the perfect will of our Heavenly Father, and of His complete sovereignty. So often do we casually slip into theoretical and theological discussions about what Heaven will be like, what the Second Return of Christ might entail, and of all other such mysteries.

It is another thing entirely to experience the mystery of a loved one, one with such a promising future and seemingly so many years ahead of him, being called home, and in an undeniably tragic way.

It is another thing entirely to experience the perfect will of the Father in this mystery–how even the distressing manner of his death and heartbreak of discovering him and being by his side in the chaos of it all was providentially orchestrated for the glory of God and comfort of his family. It is another thing entirely to be laughing and fellowshipping with a brother, present with us here in the earthly realm, and to only half an hour later see him and know, instinctively, that he is already rejoicing in the presence of the Almighty, a member of the faithful militant called to the triumphant courts of his King.

As we were crying out to the Lord for mercy and for his life, he was, simultaneously, experiencing the life everlasting. As we turned heavenward to praise the Lord upon hearing the official confirmation of his passing, crammed into that tiny hospital office, he too was praising the Lord in perfect Spirit and Truth, with the whole expanse of Heaven stretching before him. We may have beheld his face and shed tears of sorrow, but he was beholding the face of Jesus Christ, our tender Savior, who welcomed him home to the Land of the Living, where every tear is wiped away.¹

That is what it means to possess the Christian Faith, to have been gifted it. To experience death in such a tangible way, yet not doubt for even a second the everlasting life that is promised to the children of God, and to have complete hope in the resurrection of the body on the last day.

Why did He rise in the flesh in which He suffered, unless to show the resurrection of the flesh…. But if our physician Christ, God, having rescued us from our desires, regulates our flesh with His own wise and temperate rule, it is evident that He guards it from sins because it possesses a hope of salvation…”
Ambrose of Milan, On the Resurrection²

I remember so vividly jumping out of the car and running with my fiancé toward the body of our friend, our brother in the faith. The only words that would leave my lips were, “Good and gracious Father, have mercy.” Even while my speech was limited by the shock of the scene, by the slowly rising mire of panic that comes with trying, unsuccessfully, to revive a loved one, threatening to choke off every rational thought—even then, every Psalm, verse, and passage that my father required me to memorize, and catechized me in as a little girl, was illuminating and flooding the horror-hollowed valleys of my mind, staunchly pushing back the swamp of consternation with a burning, holy power.

I recalled Revelation 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” Just as Christ first did for me when He saved me as a child, all the Word I had been given and had consumed was knocking on the door of my mind, forcing its way past my shaken sensibilities to give me a deep comfort that contradicted what my five senses were experiencing.

“Yea, I have loved You with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee…Sanctify them in truth, for your Word is truth….I AM WHO I AM…Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine…The Lord is my Light and my Salvation, whom shall I fear?”³

And there to parry the dawning fear that would later be realized, over and over I heard, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”⁴ This well-known and well-beloved passage from the book of Psalms was the rising buoy I clung to in the wreckage of my comprehension. For surely, we knew our brother to be counted among the saints. Surely, he was a child of the Most High, his name written in the Lamb’s book of life. As such, even the elements that made the manner of his death sorrowful and painful were precious to the Lord, for our brother was precious to Him.

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