I haven’t had anytime to blog over the last 4-5 days because I was away in Boulder, Colorado over the Labor Day weekend performing a wedding. I absolutely loved Boulder, and it was very nice to get away from Los Angeles, from a big city, from the traffic, and away from emails, internet, computers, etc. It takes a couple of days of withdrawal sometimes, but after that, I almost dread going back to the computer.
But I am glad to be back. It was a great weekend as well as a very emotional one. I performed the wedding of my cousin and her fiance. Both the bride and groom had lost their mothers to breast cancer years ago, so it was a very emotional time for both families, as the bride and groom each had an empty chair with a rose in it to remember their mothers by. My cousin’s mother was my mom’s sister, and I lost my mother to breast cancer when I was eleven years old. Breast cancer has taken the lives of my grandmother, my aunt and my mother, and so there was a lot of emotion at the wedding as a lot of loved ones were no longer physically present, though they were definitely with us in spirit, and I believe that they were watching. So to say the least, I pretty much stumbled my way through the wedding ceremony, trying to keep it together while everyone was crying.
A verse that I have been thinking a lot about, especially in light of sickness and death, is found in 2 Corinthians 5. It is a very beautiful passage, perhaps one of the most beautiful in scripture. But I am particulary fond of verses 1-5:
Our Heavenly Dwelling
1 Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2 Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, 3 because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
Though we labor and groan under the burden of being human and living in an “earthly tent”, we know that we will one day be in a heavenly dwelling. That is the great news for my family members who labored under the disease of breast cancer, but who are now in a heavenly dwelling with Christ. And that is great news for us as followers of Christ who currently experience both the ups and downs of what it means to dwell in an “earthly tent.”
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