I remember Wednesday, February 12, 2007 like it was yesterday. It was the first time in my life I was confronted with death in such a helpless and tangible way. I had been a pastor for ten years and I felt like I understood sickness, sorrow, and grief. That day thirteen years ago I realized how little of life I understood. I realized that my faith was more firmly grounded in my faith than in my Savior. I believed that if you have big faith you get good results. That day was the beginning of the end of my trust in faith and the beginning of a long journey to truly trust Jesus alone.
I started down a path that led me through the fear of death thinking I would die early. It led to two years of me becoming undone in such a way that I began to realize as a pastor I need Jesus as much as the people who come through our doors every Sunday. It led me to a hope a true hope that made me realize no other hope will ever do. Matt McCullough in his Book Remember Death says this about sorrow and loss.
Honesty about death leads to grief, and grief over what’s true about this world leads to hopeful longing for the world to come. But there is another way in which our heightened feeling for death’s sting clarifies our hope for redemption and resurrection. It helps us see that any hope we have rests completely on a Savior who died and rose again. No other hope will do. The Heidelberg Catechism opens with a clear and profound question: What is your only comfort in life and in death? I love this question for the assumption underneath it. Any comfort in life must also provide comfort in death. If the object of our hope can’t stand up to death’s onslaught, it can’t offer true hope in life either.
Matt McCullough
Any comfort in life must provide comfort in death. Thirteen years ago I didn’t have that. Today I do. I have been a Christian my whole life and yet for thirty-two years of my life, I secretly feared death. I publicly proclaimed Christ and privately I clung to this life.
I don’t know why Robert died. I don’t. But every time I think of him and his death I smile as tears come down my face because I don’t think I would have been able to cling to a hope that can stand up to death’s onslaught if it wasn’t for his life. Weibel family I love you forever but Jesus loves you more. He is enough in our deepest pain. He is our hope. He gives us hope in this life because only he has withstood the onslaught of death.
Robert, we miss you and we can’t wait to see you again.