I’m sure you’ve had the same kind of experience I’ve had—the experience of bumping into someone you haven’t seen for many years. Maybe it is at a conference, maybe at a wedding, or maybe through pure serendipity. Yet now you’re face to face and you realize that even while you’re enjoying a conversation with that other person you’re also having a separate conversation within yourself.
In the first conversation, you’re recounting what has happened in the intervening years, telling of trials and triumphs and everything in between. Meanwhile, in the second and silent conversation you’re thinking to yourself, “Wow, he looks old! He has a lot less hair than I remember and a lot more of it is gray.” And it isn’t long before you find yourself wondering, “Wait, is he thinking the same about me? Do I look as old as he does?” And frankly, he probably is and you probably do.
When we part ways with friends and then encounter them again ten or twelve years on, we can’t help but think how different they look. And almost invariably the years and decades have not been particularly kind. Time changes our outward appearance and I hope you will not be offended when I say that it is rarely for the better. Beauty, like physical strength, peaks relatively early in life and then begins a long decline. Thankfully, beauty matters far less than wisdom and character which peak late and never go into decline. Hence it is far better to value inner beauty than outer, to value the “hidden person of the heart” and the kind of imperishable beauty that is precious to God and to those who love him (1 Peter 3:4).
When we pause to think about life on this earth it is no wonder that our physical appearance changes over time. We face illnesses that sap our strength and injuries that never fully heal. Mother’s bodies are scarred by bearing children and strained by nursing them while father’s bodies are stressed by putting in long hours to provide for their families. We suffer physical consequences related to mental disorders and spiritual attacks. We get worn down and worn out by failures, grief, and losses. The more we age, the more the inner workings of our bodies begin to fail and interrupt everything from communication to cognition to digestion. We all eventually realize that Ecclesiastes 12 is not just the Preacher’s biography, but ours as well. Vanity of vanities.
We all eventually realize that Ecclesiastes 12 is not just the Preacher’s biography, but ours as well.
So what a joy it is, then, to consider that when our time here has come to an end and we go to be with the Lord, we will see our loved ones not as they were but as they are and as they forever will be. Despite a gap of time that may be decades, they will have improved instead of declined. The weight of cares will have been lifted from their shoulders, the hollow-eyed sorrow of loss will have been removed from their countenance. The one who limped will now stride with confidence, the one whose vision had faded will now look you straight in the eye, the one who could not hear will now listen gladly and attentively. Weakness of mind will have given way to strength, frailty of body will have been replaced by fortitude. All will be well. All will be better than we have ever known or even imagined.
If there are two tracks playing in our minds in the day we are reunited with old friends and beloved family, surely the first will be rejoicing aloud in God’s mighty acts of deliverance and rejoicing in the love of the Son. And surely the second, perhaps still unspoken, will be marveling that their new inner perfection has been matched by outer perfection. We will marvel at how escaping time and all its ravages has improved them and how it has changed them—changed into the people God meant for them to be all along.
