Written by Richelle Thompson
Isaiah 65:20a (NRSV) No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime.
How we yearn for this day that Isaiah seeks. Would that we could say at each funeral that the person lived a long and fulsome life, untouched by debilitating illness or dementia, able to serve and love until the final breath.
Instead sometimes we buckle under the weight of sorrow, struggling to see God’s hand in a life cut short, a death come too soon.
I pray for this new Jerusalem when I remember baby Hannah—beloved from conception. Our friends chronicled every milestone of their first pregnancy, sharing ultrasound pictures and the hump of a protruding foot. Hannah flipped and wiggled until the winter day she stopped, and our friend delivered a thirty-two week, perfectly formed stillborn baby.
No words of comfort could soothe the ache our friends felt in those early days, but they held on to faith, to the promise of reuniting again one day in this new Jerusalem, a city of heaven.
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