Yea, though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death
Psalm 23:4a
All people walk through the valley of death just once.
But most of us will walk through the valley of the shadow of death again and again and again. Our parents die. Our friends die. Our spouse dies. Sometimes even our children die.
Life hurts.
And grief swallows.
Some people get mad at God when deaths occur. But we’re pointing the finger in the wrong direction. We need to point our finger at Satan. And we need to point the finger at ourselves. It was our rebelliousness that led us out of the Garden of Eden. Death is the inevitable consequence of sin.
God on the other hand promises to restore. He guarantees to make all things new. There will be a day when we are forgiven and healed. Resurrection is his trump card. Eternal life is the reward.
And it was a costly victory. God himself submitted to the very conditions that our sin has wrought. He came to this broken earth. He allowed us to nail him to the cross. In pain and grief and sorrow the Son of God walked through that valley of death.
Why? Because of love. And to all who choose his path of life, our loving Lord promises that death does not have the final word!
But in the meantime – and it often is a “mean time” – we are stuck walking again and again and again through this valley of shadow of death. And life hurts. And grief swallows. “But,” as the Apostle Paul says, “we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”
On this earth, we’ll keep walking through the valley of the shadow of death. But we don’t have to do it without hope!
We grieve for us who are left behind.
But we don’t grieve for the person who one moment was in the chains of earth and is their next moment opening their eyes to the glories of heaven.
In Christ’s Love,
a guy who’s walked
through too many valleys
… but has discovered,
even in day, the trail to
eternal life and greater hope
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