Everlasting Life: How God Answers Our Questions about Grief, Loss, and the Promise of Heaven

by David D. Swanson, John Ortberg (Foreword by)

Overview

When death affects one's friends or family, they wonder what to do, what to say, and how to cope. When people contemplate their own death, they wonder what will happen, and where they will go. Dr. David Swanson has led countless people through death and dying and now offers insights into walking through it with hope. Readers will:

•discover what it means to be immortal
•explore the move from this life to the next
•rejoice in the life to come
•learn to care for others in grief

Whether facing death or losing a loved one, this book shows readers that death is not the end, and the more they grasp their immortal identity now, the fuller life will be.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801014468
Publisher:	Baker Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/15/2013
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

David D. Swanson is senior pastor of the 4,000-member First Presbyterian Church of Orlando. He speaks at retreats, conferences, and churches throughout the US and is engaged in a national media teaching ministry called The Well. He has been married to his wife, Leigh, for 25 years. They live with their three teenage children in Florida.

Read an Excerpt

Everlasting Life

How God Answers Our Questions about Grief, Loss, and the Promise of Heaven

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By David D. SWANSON

Baker Books

Copyright © 2013 David D. Swanson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8010-1446-8

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CHAPTER 1

What's Going On Here?

Coming Face-to-Face with Our Old Foe

The sting of death is sin. 1 Corinthians 15:56

I have a deep sense that if we could really befriend death we would be free people. Many people never seem to befriend death and die as if they were losing a hopeless battle. But we do not have to share that sad fate.

Henri J. M. Nouwen, A Letter of Consolation

Every single thing about it was wrong. It looked wrong. It smelled wrong. Physically and emotionally, it felt wrong. There was nothing right about it.

I was in my second week as a chaplain intern at a hospital in Austin, Texas, and during my first all-night shift I got my first "death call." My pager went o!, flashing the room number. I hurried upstairs. When I entered, the family was present, but the patient was dead. I had never seen a deceased person before, and the sight so shocked me that I found it very difficult to collect my thoughts. I realized very quickly I was of no use to the family and left the room as soon as I could. Embarrassed, I discussed it with my supervisor the next morning. She assured me my reaction was completely natural and that she would help me try to process my thoughts and feelings over the next few days. She told me to take my time, slow down, and not try to process it all at once.

Later that afternoon she came to find me while I was making my rounds and asked me to come with her so I could take a look at something. We went up two flights of stairs and down a long hall of patient rooms until we came to one in particular. She pushed the door open and there in the bed was a deceased woman. She was in her late fifties or perhaps early sixties. She had short salt-and-pepper hair with barrettes holding back one side. Her eyes were mostly closed, her head was tipped back at an angle, and her mouth was wide open, almost as if she was trying to inhale one last breath. In case you didn't know, newly deceased people do not look like they do in funeral homes. Funeral homes try to make a dead person appear as much like a living person as they can. In hospitals, dead people are just dead.

My supervisor went over to the body and put her hand on the woman's arm. She began to describe what a body goes through at the time of death, what some of the possible reactions may be, and through her words, tried to disarm what was so foreign to me. At that point, I was still barely inside the doorway, staring. I felt myself beginning to sweat, and in spite of her calm demeanor, I immediately wanted to leave the room. Seeing my discomfort, she invited me to come closer: "Come here and stand next to the bed with me." Not one part of me wanted to do that, but I knew I needed to. I knew I needed to go over to this cold, deceased body that represented to me all the things I did not want to think about, and I needed to make peace with it. I needed to walk around it and look at it. I needed to linger there with myself and all those feelings, or I would be of no use to anyone as a chaplain in that hospital.

So I did. I walked over, and I looked. My supervisor took the woman's hand on the other side of the bed and said, "Take her hand, like this. It's okay. You can touch her." That next moment may have been one of the most meaningful and yet frightening moments of my life. I picked up and held the hand of a dead woman. It was cold, almost the way a piece of wet clay feels. And stiff. It did not move like a living hand. Part of me felt like I was in a grotesque horror movie.

But then quietly, just above a whisper, my supervisor began talking about the woman's life. She told me where she was from, what she did, where her family lived, and how she died. As I stood there holding her hand, a transformation happened. The dead woman became a person to me. She was not just a dead body; she was the remains of a human being who had lived and loved and laughed and learned—a woman who had been loved by God and who would be missed by many. In that moment I began to feel as though I was holding something holy, as if this whole experience had just entered a sacred space. My heart opened to the presence of God in a way I seldom knew. God was undeniably present.

And in that sacred space, I sensed God speaking this into my spirit: "David, this is why I came. Everything you see here—this loss, this death, the physical end of this person—this is what I came to defeat through my Son, Jesus." Suddenly the resurrection became vitally important to me. The phrase coming back to life took on new meaning. I began to feel what I can only describe as a rage against the death that had claimed this woman, incensed that death had left her cold, lifeless, and empty. I was overwhelmed by the feeling that everything I was taking in, everything I was seeing and experiencing was wrong. This could not be how God intended it. This couldn't really be his plan, could it?

The answer, of course, is no. Death is and always will be a corruption of the perfect plan and will of God. God's original plan was a good plan for the fullness of life in the eternal abundance of relationship with him. Think back to Genesis 1:31. God has spoken creation into existence, and then in one breathtaking moment, he beholds what he has made and declares it good. That is the original plan, the plan before death and sin entered in, the plan as it was supposed to be. Fast-forward to Revelation 21. John sees "a new heaven and a new earth" (v. 1). He beholds the restoration of the original plan and declares, "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away" (v. 4).

Now there is death, but when the original plan is restored, there won't be any dying. And there won't be mourning or crying or pain. We are living in what will one day be the "old order." There will be a new order. Even so, we must live now in the consequences of what our rebellion from God ushered in. Therefore, every time we encounter moments like I had in that hospital room, we feel it and sense it deep in our souls. Our hearts cry out, This can't be right. This cannot be what the living, loving God intended my life to be!

Perhaps you remember the first time you came face-to-face with those feelings. I felt them so strongly as I walked around that hospital bed, and yet the woman in the bed was not even a relative or close friend. Still I felt that something was distinctly and eternally wrong. When death impacts us personally, when the person in the bed is our loved one or our friend, the feelings are multiplied many times over. We cry out to the Lord. It's as if we know that he alone can correct whatever it is that has gone horribly wrong.

I have heard too many parents say, "Mothers are not supposed to bury their children." I've heard too many spouses say, "I thought we would grow old together." I've heard too many close friends say, "How could such an accident happen?" Maybe you've felt that way too. They're actually saying,

God wanted me to raise my child.

God wanted me to live to old age with my wife.

God didn't want my friend to be hit by a drunk driver.

This wasn't supposed to be the plan!

Still, we have to fight those feelings of rage and anger. In times of grief or loss, anger is one of the most acute, raw human emotions we feel. There in those moments, we start looking for answers and ask the bigger, harder questions: Why did this have to happen? Why do I have to deal with this in the first place?

I know there are instances, especially in times of great pain or personal suffering, when death can be a relief; but most of the time, it's anything but. Most of the time, it just hurts. It's wrong. It's the reason we know, deep down, that death is our enemy. That is why we fear it. And yet if we are to conquer that fear and be encouraged by God's truth, we have to be willing to come near it. We have to walk around it, examine it, even touch it. We have to honestly encounter the reality of death and in so doing learn how to handle it so that our fears are tempered by the peace Christ and his resurrection promises.

The Beginning of Death

As we begin to draw close to something we regularly avoid, we need to grasp where death came from in order to understand how we move from it to life and hope.

While we may express it in different ways—often through pain or anger—we want to know why we have to endure death. From the time we're very young, we learn to come to terms with the fact that life ends. A young boy who loses his dog turns to his mother in tears and asks, "Why did Winnie have to die?" Eventually, we all ask the why questions: If God is good and he loves us, why can't life just go on as it is? Why do we have to lose those we love?

One of my colleagues, Donna McClellan, went through a tremendously difficult time as she cared for her dying mother. The ordeal began with several trips from Orlando to the Seattle area where her mother lived. Donna helped to arrange nursing and then hospice care, but when her mother reached a critical stage, she decided to stay to be at her mother's bedside. Given the progression of her mother's illness, Donna thought it would only be a matter of days, but it took weeks. Her mother was in great discomfort. She hardly ate. It was agonizing for Donna to watch. It seemed to go on and on. At one point, totally exhausted, Donna called me, and in a moment of pure honesty she said, "Why does this have to be so hard?" In essence, she was saying, "This is just wrong. Why does it have to be this way?"

Without a Christian worldview, it is hopeless to try to answer that question. It has no answers. But when we understand the question through the truth of God's Word, we can at least reach a place of understanding—and hope. The answer lies in the nature of our sinful, fallen world. Paul mentions it in 1 Corinthians 15:21–22. As he tries to explain the wonder of our immortality through Christ, he considers first the origins of death. The bad news comes before the good news. Paul writes, "Since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive." Paul is explaining to the Corinthian Christians how death came about in the beginning. Death, he says, came through a man. It is primarily an allusion to Adam, but all humankind is included.

Looking back at Genesis 1–3, we read that God is the Creator of the universe. Those chapters provide a brief but exhilarating description of the life-giving, creative power of God. He speaks and worlds are formed. Water and sky, sea and air, sun, moon, and stars—God creates, effortlessly, eternally. And his crowning achievement is humanity. Genesis 2:7 says, "The L<=> God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." No other creature God made is described in that way. Human beings alone are living beings. He breathed his life into us in a way that corresponds to his nature, and in so doing, he gave us a quality of life unique from everything else. It's what makes us capable of being in relationship with God.

Once God created Adam, he was also quite clear about the parameters of his life, saying in Genesis 2:16–17, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die." This passage thoroughly contradicts the notion that God ever intended us to have it all. Have you ever noticed that? Many of us have adopted the false notion that a good life is a life in which we deny ourselves nothing, a life in which we have everything we want. We sometimes mistakenly view God as the one who is supposed to give it to us.

Somehow, having it all becomes the goal. The reality is that no such thing was ever intended. God made it clear from the start that we could not have everything. We were not made to be our own gods, to have the knowledge of good and evil. Instead, we were created to be in relationship with God as his beloved sons and daughters. We are not capable of knowing what is truly good and what is truly evil. Who but God can honestly know the depths of these things? As finite human beings, such knowledge will destroy us.

Therefore, when we choose to deny that truth, death becomes a reality. Genesis 2:17 is the first mention of death. It's the consequence of our willful disobedience. You know the rest. Adam and Eve eat the fruit. They disobey God, and there are consequences to their disobedience. Their relationship with God fractures, and everything changes.

God created all things in a beautiful, holy way. Death had no part in it. But because man and woman chose to sin against a holy God, a price had to be paid. Part of God's holiness is justice. Disobedience has to be answered. God says,

Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, "You must not eat of it," cursed is the ground because of you.... By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

Genesis 3:17, 19

God made the parameters painfully clear. We chose to go our own way, and we have been reaping the consequences of that choice ever since. The apostle Paul affirms this when he says, "For the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23).

The consequence of our sin is that we forfeit the life God gave us. Period. It's cut and dried. There's no wiggle room. Apart from God, there is no life. We know instinctively that somewhere along the line something went horribly, irrevocably wrong. In his sermon "The Weight of Glory," C. S. Lewis describes it as "our inconsolable secret":

We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.

We have been knocking on the door all our life, trying to get in, trying to understand where this pain, death, and heartache came from. Our sin put us on the outside of that door. Our sin separated us from the life of the Father, and in the absence of the Father, there is no life. If God is the Author and Creator of life, then apart from him there is no life. God affirms that when he says through John that "in him [Jesus] was life, and that life was the light of all mankind" (John 1:4). If God is life and light, then when we choose to separate ourselves from God, the result is death and darkness. That is death's origin.

And yet in that same Genesis passage, something rather amazing happens. Yes, we see God's holiness, but we also see the depth of his tenderness and love—the first glimpse that although death has entered, ultimately it will not prevail. Genesis 3:21 says, "The L<=> God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them."

It is startling in its content. God declared death as the penalty for Adam and Eve's actions. After the chilling pronouncements of being buried in the earth and returning to dust, you expect that doom is certain. You expect God to come and blast them from the earth, but he doesn't. Instead, he gives us a picture of utter tenderness and love. This great God, this vast, limitless God who has just stretched out his hands to create the universe, now takes those same hands and makes clothes for Adam and Eve. The picture of the infinite God crafting two sets of tiny little garments is striking. It is an enormous symbol. Think about it. At that time, the only protection from the elements was what was on them—their clothing. Up until that point, until creation fell, protection wasn't needed. In essence, with this simple action God is saying, "I know you deserve death, but I am going to allow you to live—and I want to give you something that will protect you from the painful elements of this life." It is the first act of grace. They deserve death. Instead, God graciously gives them life.
(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Everlasting Life by David D. SWANSON. Copyright © 2013 David D. Swanson. Excerpted by permission of Baker Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Foreword John Ortberg 9

Acknowledgments 11

Introduction 15

Part 1 The Journey Begins: Up Close and Personal with Our Last Enemy

1 What's Going On Here? Coming Face-to-Face with Our Old Foe 33

2 How Do I Handle It? Finding Assurance in Our Fears about Leaving This World 49

3 What Do I Say? What Do I Do? Ministry to Others through Death, Grief, and Loss 67

Part 2 The Journey Continues: Getting from Here to There

4 How Do I Live with Loss? Moving from Grief toward Growth 91

5 How Will We Find Our Way Home? Jesus Shows Us the Way 111

6 Why Not Go to Heaven Now? The Significance of Life in This World 125

Part 3 The Journey Concludes: The Joy of Our Eternal Home

7 What Is Heaven Like? Life in Our Father's House 143

8 What Happens in the End? Why the New Heaven and the New Earth Matter 163

Notes 183