You Are Never Alone by Lucado Max

Author:Lucado, Max [Lucado, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2020-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

We await, not a redemption from our bodies, but the redemption of our bodies. The totality of our humanness will be reclaimed. We are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:14) yet frail and temporary “like the flower of the field” (Isa. 40:6). Our frailty is short lived. As joint heirs with Christ, we will enjoy a deliverance identical to his. “We will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:5 NIV ).

Do you believe this? Jesus’ question to Martha is his question to you.

Death is the great equalizer. What do the billionaire and the peasant have in common? Both will die. We all will. But not all will face death in the same manner. Let the story of the resurrected Lazarus remind you: Jesus’ authority extends over even the cemetery.

Do you believe this? Not your church, your family, your parents, or society, but you. The question is personal. What’s more, it is precise.

Do you believe this? This claim Christ makes about his deity and about your destiny? Jesus is Lord over the cemetery. His voice can empty a grave. And you are destined for a Lazarus moment. Do you believe this?

George H. W. Bush did. Few people have led a more vibrant life than the forty-first president of the United States. Fighter pilot. Congressman. Ambassador. CIA director. Vice president for eight years. President for four. He had access to power and influence like few people in history. Yet none of that mattered on November 29, 2018. His ninety-four-year-old body was frail. In what would turn out to be his next-to-final day on earth, he received his good friend James Baker.

Baker called him “Jefe,” Spanish for “Boss.” Bush called Baker “Bake.” The two often went out for lunch together. Baker would enter the house and say, “Where are we going today, Jefe?” But on this day the former president asked the question before Baker could. “Where are we going today, Bake?” His longtime friend replied, “Well, Jefe, we are going to heaven.” To which Bush replied, “Good . . . because that is where I want to go.”

Wanting to make sure I had the details of this story correct, I texted Russ Levenson, the pastor of the Bush family in Houston. He added this note: “In his final days we spoke often about heaven. He never asked, ‘Will I go?’ or ‘Is there a heaven?’ He just wanted to know what it was like.” 3

President Bush led a stellar life. But in the end it was not his accomplishments that mattered. It was his decision to trust the accomplishment of a Jewish rabbi.

I still don’t linger in cemeteries. My weekend at the Resthaven Funeral Home didn’t leave me longing to return. Offer me a chance to make a funeral home my home, and I’ll pass, thank you very much.

I do what most visitors to a cemetery do. I pay my respects, attend the memorial service, and leave. I do indulge one imagining, however. I pause and

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