The roll-call of our loved ones

Memorial Day weekend 2006

The song says, "When the roll is called up yonder, I'll be there..." That song raises more questions in my mind than I have answers. For instance, what will be the final straw that prompts the sounding of 'the trumpet of the Lord,' where is 'up yonder,' and exactly what constitutes 'the roll?'

What I do have is hope. I have hope that whatever triggers the sounding of the trumpet of the Lord, I'll be there. I have hope that when that roll is called, my name will be on it. I have hope that even though I don't know where heaven is, I'll be with the Lord.

I also have hope that 'in that great triumphant morning when the dead in Christ shall rise' I'll  be there with the saints of old and my dear loved ones - both those presently alive and those who have long since departed.

In the book of Hebrews, chapter eleven, we have a listing of great men and women of faith. Chapter twelve begins with this verse, "Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us."

Years ago, when offering my feelings of grief to the family of a woman who had just died at the age of 42, her father - an old Cherokee patriarch from eastern Oklahoma, said to me, "Jim, thank you, but it's in knowing that we all will die that we know how to live."

Indeed, and I find the comfort of knowing that there is a 'balcony of witnesses' surrounding us to be very encouraging to continue running the race with intensity and deliberation.

The older I get, the closer I feel to those who have passed through the veil...gone on before us. An old Russian philosopher once said, "Life is so precious and life is so fragile that we must treat the living as if they were dying and the dead...as if they were alive."

That calls us to a tenderness in our relationships and an awareness of how inextricably linked we are with those who have gone along this path before us.

I look at photos of my mother as a young woman and those of her grandmother - Amanda, who died a dozen years or so before my birth, and then I see my sister's youngest daughter at her college graduation and know that at least for these five generations there are almost carbon-copy genetics at work, as far as appearance is concerned.

I wonder if Amanda Jackson Swearengin was standing in the 'balcony' last Saturday watching her aging granddaughter sitting in the stands, and her 'spitting image' great-great granddaughter walking to receive her degree in Psychology? I suspect Amanda viewed it all.

Maybe that's just wishful thinking. I don't know. What I am convinced of is this; it will be wonderful there - and it will be worth it all, when we see Jesus.