Not Into Nothingness

We have mentioned before the beautiful scene form The Blue Bird by Maeterlinck as the children left their home in heaven to be born on earth, with anxiety and anticipation, some not wanting to leave their friends, some fearing to come to earth. Then there is the sound of gladness, the song of mothers coming out to meet the children sent from their heavenly home. ¹

Suppose now we follow through a further sequence suggested by this scene—through the living and learning of life, with its problems and opportunities, its choosing and growing, and doing and enduring—and then after all the experiences of earth there comes s return to the heavenly home—again with anxiety and anticipation, and again with reluctance to leave friends and family.

Leaving where we lived before, and coming here we call birth. Leaving here and going on to other opportunities we call death, and one is as natural as the other. And how blessed it is to have a sense of assurance that reunion with friends and family is a part of our Creator’s plan and purpose, as we leave this life with an everlasting future before us.

And there beyond the knowledge of life’s ever-continuing purpose will give us more fully the answers we so much seek. Thank God for the assurance that we shall not pass fleetingly into a nothingness, through the swift littleness of mortal life—but with an awareness of ourselves and the love of loved ones, and life as a literal everlasting reality.

“Is death the last sleep?” asked Sir Walter Scott. And then he answered his own question: “No, it is the last and final awakening.”² And to those who have lost those they love: May the sharpens of sorrow be softened by assurance that these things are so, and that life is worth all the doing and enduring, and that beyond time is eternity with continued consciousness and purpose and literal reality of life, as real as we have here.

You who mourn, and who remember, take comfort to your hearts, this day and always, with the assurance that these things are so.