Wisdom-Trek / Creating a LegacyWelcome to Day 1314 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomWeddings and Funerals – Meditation MondayWisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1314 of our Trek, and it is time for Meditation Monday. Taking time to relax, refocus, and reprioritize our lives is crucial in order to create a living legacy. For you, it may just be time alone for quiet reflection. You may utilize structured meditation practices. In my life, meditation includes reading and reflecting on God’s Word and in prayer. It is a time to renew my mind, refocus on what is most important, and making sure that I am nurturing my soul, mind, and body. As you come along with me on our trek each Meditation Monday, it is my hope and prayer that you, too, will experience a time for reflection and renewing of your mind.

Two occasions that bring families and friends together is when we unite to the one we love, and when we have to say goodbye to the one we love in this world. So today, let us consider:

Weddings and FuneralsWhen a man and a woman marry, the two become one. Those who were separate, are now united. It is a life that is meant to be lived happily ever after. That is, at least, until death once again separates them. We should not fear that death, though, because Jesus promised, not just an afterlife, but a better life. This promise of Christ is found in https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+14%3A1-3andversion=NLT (John 14:1-3): Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.

We who live in the western world might miss the wedding images that are described in this passage, but Jesus’ listeners didn’t. This was a groom-to-bride promise. Upon receiving the permission of both families, the groom returned to the home of his father and built a home for his bride. He “prepared a place.”By promising to do the same for us, Jesus elevates funerals, which is his imminent death, to the same hope level as weddings. From his perspective, the trip to the grave and the walk down the aisle warrant identical excitement.

Weddings are great news! Jesus says, so are burials. Both celebrate a new era, name, and home. In both, the groom walks the bride away on his arm. Jesus is our coming groom. He said, I am going to prepare a place for you, and then “I will come and get you.” He will meet us at the altar. Your final glimpse of life will trigger your first glimpse of him.

But how can we be sure he will keep this pledge? Do we have any guarantee that his words are more than empty poetry or vain superstition? Dare we set our hope and hearts in the hands of a small-town Jewish carpenter? The answer rests in the Jerusalem grave. If Jesus’ tomb is empty, then his promise is not. Leave it to the apostle Paul to reduce the logic to a single sentence in https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+15%3A23andversion=NLT (1 Corinthians 15:23): But there is an order to this resurrection: Christ was raised as the first of the harvest; then all who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back.

Paul was writing to Corinthian Christians, people who had been schooled in the Greek philosophy of a shadowy afterlife. Someone was convincing them that corpses couldn’t be raised, neither theirs nor Christ’s. The apostle couldn’t bear such