CONCLUSION

WHEN GOD’S STORY BECOMES YOURS…

You Will Finally Graduate

MAY 19, 2007, WAS A SPLENDID NIGHT FOR AN OUTDOOR graduation. The South Texas sky was as blue as a robin’s egg. A just-passed rain shower perfumed the air. Thirty-four members of the Lucado clan occupied a sizable section of the amphitheater seats in honor of high-school-graduating Sara, my youngest daughter.

Never accused of timidity, we Lucados attempted to do the wave as Sara walked across the platform. We more closely resembled popping popcorn… but Sara heard our support. Graduation warrants such displays. There’s nothing small about the transfer of tassels. Cut the cake and call the newspaper. Applaud the closing, not of a chapter, but of a tome. Graduation is no small matter.

What we didn’t know, however, is that two Lucado women were graduating the same evening. About the same time Sara stepped across the platform, my mom stepped into paradise. Sara and Thelma, separated in age by seventy-six years, yet joined by the same graduation date.

Applause for the first. Tears for the second. Hooray for Sara. Oh my about Mom. Gladness. Sadness. The sorrow is understandable. Reactions to graduation and death shouldn’t be identical.

Yet should they be so different?

Both celebrate completion and transition. And both gift the graduate with recognition: a diploma to one and a brand-new life to the other.

It will take only a second — as quickly as an eye blinks—when the last trumpet sounds. The trumpet will sound and those who have died will be raised to live forever, and we will all be changed. This body that can be destroyed must clothe itself with something that can never be destroyed. And this body that dies must clothe itself with something that can never die.

—1 CORINTHIANS 15:52–53 NCV

As God’s story becomes your story, you make this wonderful discovery: you will graduate from this life into heaven. Jesus’ plan is to “gather together in one all things in Christ” (Ephesians 1:10 NKJV). “All things” includes your body. Your eyes that read this book. Your hands that hold it. Your blood-pumping heart, arm-hinging elbow, weight-supporting torso. God will reunite your body with your soul and create something unlike anything you have seen: an eternal body.

You will finally be healthy. You never have been. Even on the days you felt fine, you weren’t. You were a sitting duck for disease, infections, airborne bacteria, and microbes. And what of you on your worst days?

Last Sunday as I sat in front of our church, my eyes seemed to radar toward the physically challenged. A recent retiree with a rush of white hair just found out about a brain tumor. So did a thirtyish mother of three. “I thought it was a migraine,” she had told me earlier in the week.

Philip is in law school and a wheelchair. I haven’t seen Adam in several weeks. He’s a Juilliard grad. Multiple sclerosis has silenced his keyboard. Doctors are giving another member two months to live.

I hate disease. I’m sick of it.

So is Christ. Consider his response to the suffering of a deaf mute. “He took him aside from the multitude, and put His fingers in his ears, and He spat and touched his tongue. Then, looking up to heaven, He sighed, and said to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened’ “ (Mark 7:33–34 NKJV).

Everything about this healing stands out. The way Jesus separates the man from the crowd. The tongue and ear touching. The presence of Aramaic in the Greek account. But it’s the sigh that we notice. Jesus looked up to heaven and sighed. This is a sigh of sadness, a deep breath, and a heavenly glance that resolves, “It won’t be this way for long.”

Jesus will heal all who seek healing in him. There are no exceptions to this promise — no nuances, fine-print conditions, or caveats. To say some will be healed beyond the grave by no means diminishes the promise. The truth is this: “When Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2, emphasis mine).

“We shall be like him.” Let every parent of a Down syndrome or wheelchair-bound child write these words on the bedroom wall. Let the disabled, infected, bedridden, and anemic put themselves to sleep with the promise “We shall be like him.” Let amputees and the atrophied take this promise to heart: “We shall be like him.” We shall graduate from this version of life into his likeness.

You’ll have a spiritual body. In your current state, your flesh battles your spirit. Your eyes look where they shouldn’t. Your taste buds desire the wrong drinks. Your heart knows you shouldn’t be anxious, but your mind still worries. Can’t we relate to Paul’s confession? “I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge” (Romans 7:22–23 MSG).

Your “parts” will no longer rebel in heaven. Your new body will be a spiritual body, with all members cooperating toward one end. Joni Eareckson Tada’s words are powerful on this point. She has been confined to a wheelchair since the age of seventeen. Yet the greatest heavenly attraction for her is not new legs but a new soul.

I can’t wait to be clothed in righteousness. Without a trace of sin. True, it will be wonderful to stand, stretch, and reach to the sky, but it will be more wonderful to offer praise that is pure. I won’t be crippled by distractions. Disabled by insincerity. I won’t be handicapped by a ho-hum halfheartedness. My heart will join with yours and bubble over with effervescent adoration. We will finally be able to fellowship fully with the Father and the Son.

For me, this will be the best part of heaven.32

In heaven “there shall be no more curse” (Revelation 22:3 NKJV). As much as we hate carcinomas and cardiac arrests, don’t we hate sin even more? Cystic fibrosis steals breath, but selfishness and stinginess steal joy. Diabetes can ruin the system of a body, but deceit, denial, and distrust are ruining society.

Heaven, however, has scheduled a graduation. Sin will no longer be at war with our flesh. Eyes won’t lust, thoughts won’t wander, hands won’t steal, our minds won’t judge, appetites won’t rage, and our tongues won’t lie. We will be brand new.

Some of you live in such road-weary bodies: knees ache, eyes dim, skin sags. Others exited the womb on an uphill ride. While I have no easy answers for your struggle, I implore you to see your challenge in the scope of God’s story. View these days on earth as but the opening lines of his sweeping saga. Let’s stand with Paul on the promise of eternity.

So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.

—2 CORINTHIANS 4:16–18 MSG

I write these words during the final hours of a two-week vacation. I’ve passed the last dozen days with my favorite people, my wife and daughters. We’ve watched the sun set, fish jump, and waves crash. We’ve laughed at old stories and made new memories. A trip for the ages.

At its inception, however, I got searched at airport security. I removed my shoes and handed my boarding pass to the official. He instructed me to step over to the side. I groaned as he waved his wand over my body. Why single me out? Isn’t it enough that we have to plod barefoot through a scanner? Do they think I am a terrorist? You can tell that I don’t like the moments at airport security. But as I remember this vacation, I won’t reflect on its irritating inauguration. It was necessary but quickly lost in the splendor of the vacation.

You suppose we’ll someday say the same words about this life? “Necessary but quickly lost in the splendor of heaven.” I have a hunch we will. We’ll see death differently too. We’ll remember the day we died with the same fondness we remember graduation day.

By the way, if I graduate before you do, you’ll see me waiting for you. I’ll be the one in the stands starting the wave.