3.25-Living in a community of Hope of life after death.

3.25-

If you are blessed with a healthy body and mind and are passionate about what you do in life you go, go and go. Yesterday my wife and I discussed going 80 mph in our 50's and 50 mph in our 60's and 40mph in our 70's. We still enjoy being involved in community activities and doing many things we have done for the fifty years of our marriage but things are slower now.

My nation has been impacted by the resurrection power of God. My parents, Wayne and Cora Sue Wishard lived and died with the belief that after death there would be a reunion with those who had moved on to a "better place".

That "better place" set the life style of my grandparents on both sides of my family. Most of my uncles, aunts and cousins were very active workers for Jesus in the community. From sitting up with sick people and cooperating to get hay baled before rain or joining hands to build a barn to loaning and sharing farm equipment this was the normal life I grew up in Fannin and Delta county Texas.

My school was called Fannindel and most of the teachers and students attended one of the churches around the towns of Ladonia and Pecan Gap, Texas. My own set of cousins went to a church in the country, Oak Ridge Church of Christ. Any funeral at the church was followed by burial across the street in the Oak Ridge Cementery. When we exited the building as kids on Easter we had eggs hidden among the grave markers. There in the midst of death and loss was youth and life and the continuity of life's longing for itself.

The Oak Ridge Cementery has a wonderful memorial to the soldiers who have served our nation and are buried there. These laid down their lives to protect the freedoms to worship and other freedoms we enjoy.

Jesus resurrection and faith in Him helped many of them to have courage in difficult situations.

My grandparents and parents have now gone to that "better place". I also have a brother, a niece and great nephew over there as well as several beloved cousins and friends. . Living with hope means confidence to take the road less traveled and walk with Jesus who keeps us secure in the midst of a dangerous world. This hope travels along with Sheila and I this year as we celebrate 50 years of marriage and experience being in our 70's. Inwardly we are renewed day by day but outwardly we slow down. For some 70's are the new 60's but for us the 70's are the 70's and we are enjoying every moment of it so far.

In the shadow of our parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts and beloved teachers and coaches who have gone on we walk by faith that this world is not our home and because of that we live each day more fully.

 
John 11
⁴⁵ Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. ⁴⁶ But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. ⁴⁷ Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.
“What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. ⁴⁸ If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.”
⁴⁹ Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! ⁵⁰ You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”
⁵¹ He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, ⁵² and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. ⁵³ So from that day on they plotted to take his life.
⁵⁴ Therefore Jesus no longer moved about publicly among the people of Judea. Instead he withdrew to a region near the wilderness, to a village called Ephraim, where he stayed with his disciples.
⁵⁵ When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, many went up from the country to Jerusalem for their ceremonial cleansing before the Passover. ⁵⁶ They kept looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the temple courts they asked one another, “What do you think? Isn’t he coming to the festival at all?” ⁵⁷ But the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that anyone who found out where Jesus was should report it so that they might arrest him.



Hebrews 11.