Chaplain's Corner

It is funny how impressions are made. As I reflect back over my life there have been a few spiritual events that have left indelible impressions on my soul. One that I reflect on often provides an appropriate backdrop for my Easter article. Easter, as we might know, is God’s emphatic guarantee that eternal life is not just some fancy, but is a literal reality. When Jesus rose from the grave the act proclaimed: Death has been defeated, the grave is now impotent, and life after death, eternal life is absolutely real.

I grew up in a home where this was a regular topic of conversation, especially being ready to die. According to my faith, being ready to die is directly connected to the grace of God that is offered in the giving Jesus to die for our sins and the additional grace extended to us to trust our eternities entirely to Him and his promise to save us, forgive us and grant us everlasting life.

It is this promise of everlasting life that is guaranteed by Jesus’ resurrection. Paul taught that if Jesus did not rise from the grave our faith is futile and we should be pitied above all people. But Jesus did rise and for that reason we look towards death and the grave with the certainty that following there will be resurrection and eternal life.

As a 12 year old boy in 1965 it was my search for this assurance that drew me up the stairs of Church of God on King Street in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, which was having revival services that week. It had been a spiritually troubling summer, I was coming to terms with my faith. I had been instructed well but I was working on my own embrace of those truths. As I passed the church, whose doors and windows were open I heard a soloist. This was the song that she sang: “There’ll be light in the sky, from the palace on high, when I come to the end of the road. Sweet relief from all care will be waiting me there, when I come to the end of the road. When the long day is ended, the journey is o’er, I shall enter that blessed abode, for my Savior I love will be waiting for me, when I come to the end of the road.”

I stood just outside the door and listened as the second and third verses were sung … “Every long weary mile I’ll recount with a smile, when I come to the end of the road. And the foes that beset, God will make me forget, when I come to the end of the road. When the long day is ended, the journey is o’er, I shall enter that blessed abode, for my Savior I love will be waiting for me, when I come to the end of the road.” “Just a gate open wide and a friend by my side, when I come to the end of the road, that is all that I ask as a crown for my task, when I come to the end of the road. When the long day is ended, the journey is o’er, I shall enter that blessed abode, for my Savior I love will be waiting for me, when I come to the end of the road.”

A sweet comfort filled my soul that summer evening when I was twelve year old. It was one of a number of spiritual events that would fix my faith in Jesus firmly in my heart and give me the courage to serve Him the rest of my life. I’m a fair bit closer to the end of the road than I was that summer evening, but I am more confident than ever that that first resurrection was indeed the evidence I needed to commit my eternity into the hands of God and I will see Him at the end of my road.