I Believe In The ResurrectionSample

Every believer’s body  

In a sense, forest fires are ordinary. They’ve been happening “naturally,” through lightning strikes, for instance, for millennia. Forestry professionals will point out the positive “recharging” effects to the whole ecosystem of the big burn.

Except when there are homes, people, and animals in the way. People who build their homes in the forests of the mountain West are taking a risk, hoping that one of these wildfires won’t incinerate their places. Can you imagine the misery of the people who have to come back to pick through the ashes of a burned-down home? Almost everything tangible in their lives went up in smoke.

The day of our deaths will also take all possessions out of our hands. More—a day is coming when God will return to this earth, melt it down, and re-create a dazzling new universe. Everything tangible in people’s former lives will perish—except for the people. On the day of Christ’s return, we will trade in our stuff for the people we “lost” through death. Every believer’s body will rise, be publically acquitted in God’s court, and be gathered together for the Grand Reunion: “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life” (Daniel 12:2).

In the new world that God will create, death will never separate us again. We will get back all of our loved ones who died in the Lord. All of them. Seriously. All of them.    l