My father would’ve turned 74 today.
My brother, my mother, and my dad’s wife will, sometime today, drive west out on 36th Street to the foot of the Tucson Mountains and sprinkle his ashes over the desert floor, where, symbolically, they’ll join the ashes of his parents, my beloved Papa and Grandma Lou. I couldn’t be there, couldn’t afford another flight out to Tucson, but I’ll spend the day remembering. And I’ll grieve, but grieve with rejoicing. Someday, I don’t know when, the trumpet of the Lord will sound and those ashes, I don’t know how, will knit together and fill out and rise up, and in the twinkling of an eye, dad will be raised, resurrected to join his soul in the sweet presence of Jesus.
It doesn’t require my understanding; it requires only the perplexing, extravagant, inundating love of Christ, himself raised up.