What My Brother Knows

Last month, my only brother was shot and killed in a workplace shooting. It has been devastating for all involved. He leaves behind family and friends who not only love him dearly but need him desperately. There are just no words that can express the impact this tragic event has left on our family.

One thing I have been thinking of since that horrible day is that my brother knows. He knows what we all are wondering. There is no more wondering for him. While here on this earth we can only have faith, but once you leave the physical your faith becomes sight…whatever that faith is. If one believes there is a God, then he will know there is a God. If one does not believe there is a God, then he will know there is a God. I am sure that my brother would want everyone else to know what he knows.

Thirty-three years ago, my first baby boy was born with a heart defect. He lived only 6 days. I remember the moment the doctor told us that our precious little boy had died. My first thought was that he now knew. All of the struggles we might have maintaining a strong faith in God, my little baby knows. I am sure that he, like my brother, would want us to know what he knows.

It reminds me of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16.

“There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

“Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’

“Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’  And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’”

There are a lot of lessons to be learned in this brief passage, but I keep going back to the last paragraph. The part where the rich man begs Abraham to let Lazarus go back and warn his family about what he, the rich man, now knows. Abraham said, “No.” Pleading with him, the rich man says that they will listen if someone returns from the dead. Abraham said, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.”

God has used people from the beginning of time to teach others about who He is and to warn them about what the consequences of their sin will be. And, yes, someone did return from the dead. Is anyone listening to Him? We have God’s own words that we can read in our own language telling us everything the rich man wanted his family to know…everything my brother wants us to know…everything my baby wants us to know. Just as Abraham said, if they will not listen to what the Bible has to say, they will not be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.

Have you experienced the death of a loved one? While pondering what it means — why it happened — consider that your loved one would want now, more than anything, for you to believe what he knows. That God is real. That He sent His Son to live as a man and die for our sins and be brought back to life and ascend back to Heaven where He now sits at the right hand of God. Your loved one, no matter if he was a believer while on earth or not, wants you to believe in God and to obey Him and to serve Him. Whether you have experienced the death of your loved one recently and are still in deep pain because of the separation and loneliness you feel (as with my brother) or your loved one died years ago and you can now breathe again but still feel the sorrow and the hurt (as with my baby), consider what it is they would want you to do now. You can then look forward to the day when your faith shall be sight, either from your own death or the final day when the Lord comes again, and confidently say, “It is well with my soul.”

And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.
by Horatio Spafford (It Is Well With My Soul)

Diana