My father died around this time six years ago. This description is one he, himself, shared at a friend’s funeral many years before. It’s a good piece of prose, not just due to its imagery, but because it is true.

‘Gone From My Sight’

“I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says, “There, she is gone.”

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.

And she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me – not in her.

And just at the moment when someone says, “There, she is gone,” there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!”

And that is dying…”

We find ourselves amidst immense struggles just now. Though the death of those we love always pricks, death out of time lends considerable pause to our days. For those who have lost loved ones during these few years of trouble and loss, I read everything you write, look at every photo, and think about the unnatural quiet that has come to your daily routine. And not I, alone, but the world experiences a heavy grief and silent ache. That world, people we know and those we have never met, sends prayers – many prayers – that an unseen enemy’s attack will, itself, receive its just counterassault.

For while goodness might be temporarily silenced, it will not remain so. It will rise in glorious triumph. Until then, those of us left will stand. We will stand firm in the knowledge of God’s mercy and Jesus’ victory. We will stand firm in our part of the battle wherever it may find us. And we will stand firm because we know Who has already won.