The Designer… and the Design

In some ways, time heals and softens the sharpness of many sorrows, but the sharpness of separation from our loved ones can become acute at any time, as any moment may bring its own reminders of them⎯especially as the years increase, especially as the long years come and go for those who live in loneliness.

Even now we know that there would really be no heaven for us without those we love, and for this reason we are inexpressibly grateful for the assurances we have of everlasting life, which makes the meaning of a day of remembrance and memorial one of looking hopefully forward, and not one of looking bitterly back.

(And even the doubter should live as if he knew that life were everlasting, because he has nothing to lose by doing so, and everything to gain. This one side-thought could well become a subject for further pursuit⎯but nor for now.)

Now we should like to look a moment at another reassuring side of the evidence for everlasting life: In all the works of an architect or engineer or artist, we are likely to see in all of them some essential similarities. A man’s distinctive mark is somehow always on his work. In some essentials each person is likely to repeat himself, and in everything he does carry over from the past some suggestion of the future.

So with the Lord God, Organizer and Designer of heaven and earth and all that in them is⎯surely He who made the earth would not do less than suggest something of the pattern of heaven in it. Beauty here would surely suggest something of the semblance of beauty hereafter. Love here, and the cherishing of our loved ones, would surely suggest some semblance of the pattern of cherishing our loved ones hereafter. Will companionship mean less in heaven? Will our loved ones mean less there? Will our children be less cherished?

The questions themselves suggest their own answer. And aside from all other assurances, which we accept, no doubting, and in full faith, we accept not doubting also, that God, the great Designer, will be true to His design. And since the best loved thing in life is the love and sweetness of companionship with loved ones, surely a continuance of that sweetness of association, which means so much here, is the promise and assurance that it will be so hereafter.

Doubt not, you who mourn and you who remember, that the great Designer will be true to His design.