Here are some vignettes, some short reflections I have shared on my dad’s passing into the eternal bliss of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit over the last few weeks on Facebook. We just had a graveside service for him a week ago in Lake Elsinore, CA. His absence is a strange thing I’ll never get used to. Praise the Lord his absence means he is present with the Lord. His race is finished.

Reading deep theology assuages the pain I am experiencing at the loss of my dad. When I contemplate the depth reality of who God is, His magnitude and eternity as that is revealed in Jesus Christ, my dad’s life gains a deeper concreteness. When I think of my dad as given substance from God’s deep and constant, His enduring Life, I gain a vision of eternity that is glorious and weighty; a place where my dad can and does have a lasting home. When I think my dad this way I no longer feel the burden of needing to keep him alive in my memory; that is because he is alive indeed in the very womb of the Father. My dad’s endurance and life is embedded in God’s, and so God keeps my dad alive. In this me and my dad (and all the saints) share a common bond of eternal fellowship that transcends between those in the now of the beyond, and those in the now of this in-between time. I have God’s shalom in thinking my dad in the visio Dei. 02-10-2021

Even though it was just my dad’s body that went into the ground, it is still difficult. Yes, I know he is present with the Lord (intermediately). But the way I have known and related to my dad was only through contact with his physical body. Indeed, this remains the hope for the Christian. We believe in a bodily resurrection, and so I know that my contact with my dad will always be with him through bodily interaction; even if our bodies, respectively, take on an immortal rather than just the mortal form we have always related to each other through up until his death. When I see my dad again, it will be bodily; indeed, it will be in the bodies we were sown in, in these earthy tents, but transformed and resurrected into the heavenly temples they were birthed towards in the resurrected and glorified body of Jesus Christ. In other words, my dad’s now buried body isn’t just a husk that has been discarded, not anymore than the crucified Christ’s was. Just as Christ’s crucified body was raised and glorified, so too will my dad’s be; and so too will all the bodies of those who have believed on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Christian hope is a bodily, a very physical hope. Without this hope we might as well go out and eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. 02-09-2021

Death itself witnesses to the reality of the resurrection. The cross of Christ as the culmination of humanity’s abstract end emblazons on the human heart the need for resurrection. Death as an absence and loss, in itself, illustrates in the most concrete of ways how it is not the way things “ought to be.” The resurrection of Christ is the theological conclusion to this sense of oughtness; viz. that death left to itself only witnesses to. 02-09-2021

Death is an absence that endures till Life swallows it up whole. 02-08-2021

The resurrection is the primary hope, and ground of the Christian reality. Without it Christianity is no different than any other religion in the world. But with it, it gives us a reality that transcends the mundane projections of an abstract humanity. It allows us to rip through the veil of the phenomenal into the inner-recesses of God’s Holy life. 02-08-2021

Death of a Dad brings new perspective on life. 02-06-2021

My Dad is absent from the body present with the Lord. This is where his body now rests waiting to be raised up at the coming of the Lamb of God. His loss feels heavy, but not as heavy as the presence he now has, by sight, with the triune God. I think it is hard for us to imagine just what that might mean or look like, so we often categorize it into an ethereal file. But there is nothing ethereal about the death of my Dad, and thus even more so, there is nothing ethereal about the death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. My Dad is reposing in the glory of that life, Christ’s life, which will never perish ever again. 02-05-2021

Today we are burying my Dad, at a small graveside in Southern California. Covid19 rules have limited the numbers, basically, to a family only service. It will be a short service as well, limited to only 30 minutes. Family and personal friend, and my parents’ former pastor, Jeff Saltzmann will be officiating. Pray for the peace of Jesus Christ to be as pervasive at this service as it is now for my Dad who moves and breathes in the presence of the living and triune God; no longer by faith, but by sight. 02-04-2021

When I would think about my Dad, as he would randomly come to mind throughout the day in the past, I would ache and be uneasy. I would feel this way cause he was suffering in manifold ways. So, I would pray often. Now the feeling is still loss and absence (and pressure on my heart), but I also have a lot of peace (and envy) knowing that he is experiencing the manifold and plentiful majesty of the triune God—my mind is blown by this. He is the closest person I’ve known to enter the glorified status; which makes heaven seem even that much more real and personal. 01-26-2021

I gain all sorts of peace knowing that my Dad is utterly consumed by the presence and knowledge of the living God. I seek to emulate this consumption by the faith of Christ. My Dad now has the advantage of being consumed by beatific vision. 01-26-2021

There will be a graveside service for my Dad next week. It will be closed to family, and a few close friends (it is also limited in number by Covid regulations). This life is too short, but it is only the seed for eternity (one side of that or the other). In Christ death, ultimately, has absolutely no bite (but it does still have penultimate sting). The second my Dad took his last breath, LIKE THAT! in a twinkling of an eye he was escorted by his angelic cohort into the presence of the Lamb of God, the triune God, and the communion of the saints (I am positive his angels feel relieved at this point too). When we bury him it is only a temporary thing in anticipation of the shout of the Archangel, the Last Trumpet sound, and the parousia of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ. His body will break through the soil where he is lain, just a twinkling before those of us left living at the Coming, and at this point he will receive His fully consummate glorified body along with the rest of us. Now he reposes in an intermediate status, with a ‘spiritual’ bodily form suited for his current station. The saints in glory wait and long for the resurrected body along with the rest of us. Maranatha 01-26-2021

Back in 98 my Dad walked with me through Multnomah Bible College, as we were visiting family in Portland. He helped me decide on Multnomah as the Bible College for me. The Lord used Multnomah to change my life. Eo ipso the Lord used my Dad to change my life in this instance, and in many others. What he did in this instance was bear witness to the reality of Jesus Christ. This is what the Christian life is about; i.e. pointing others to the risen Christ. If my Dad hadn’t given his life to Jesus back on January 22, 1970 I wouldn’t be here. Christ’s birth in my Dad ultimately led to my birth, physically, and then spiritually as he and my mom led me to Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. Jesus ties all things together, now and for eternity. This Holy knot continues to bind me and my Dad, and all those in Christ together, now and for all eternity. He is absent, but it is only an absence of body (for now) not fellowship. 01-26-2021

I think it is important that we don’t immanentize Heaven. Heaven is the domain of the triune God’s intense presence; His throne room. It is important that we don’t project creaturely modes of reasoning into Heaven, as if the creaturely is continuous with the heavenly. If we imagine that heaven too closely resembles our present experience of lived life we sublimate heaven in a way that guts it of its hopefulness in majesty. There is a transcendence about heaven that is commensurate with the immortal bodies required to live there. When we attempt to imagine it (even though we can’t help but), we disgorge it of the splendor it actually possesses. The Apostle Paul said what he saw there was so ineffable that it was unspeakable. 01-25-2021

It has been 2 weeks as of today. It feels as fresh now, as then. I don’t even understand how it has been 2 weeks (I’m sure my Dad feels the same, but for other [better!] reasons); feels a blur. One of the hardest parts about this is that my Dad ultimately died a ‘death of despair.’ It is a tragedy. But H/he is risen! 01-25-2021

The thing about death, the worst part, is that it is final for those left behind. For the one who has died in Christ, that’s a whole other beautiful and mind-boggling story. But it’s feeling of loss and finality till the eschaton genuinely makes the heart feel broken. 01-24-2021