My dad loved to cook. This was a passion that began relatively late in his life after the kids had moved out. With an empty nest, my parents were able to live a slower-paced life and my dad began to dabble in cooking. He soon found that he loved it and that my mother was only too happy to pass the torch. He loved to freestyle and experiment, to forsake recipes to just see where his taste buds would lead him. It is one of the tragedies of his sudden and unexpected death that he had just treated himself to a new high-end range when he died. Never once did he get to cook upon it. Never once did he get to enjoy it. When I visited my parents’ home after he died, the range was resting in its place in the kitchen, but with the packaging still around it. He had never even opened it.
My son was in love. He had gotten engaged to a lovely young lady and together they had begun to plan their wedding. They had settled on a date and a guest list and begun to plan their ceremony and order their invitations. And then he, too, was taken every bit as suddenly and unexpectedly as my father. When I arrived at his college dorm room and opened his computer, I found his wedding planning documents open and active, the last tasks he had worked on before going to be with the Lord. He had died a fiancé but not a husband, his plans interrupted, never to be realized.
There is an element of tragedy in every death. Even the oldest among us has dreams and plans, ideas to try, and interests to explore. And if even the oldest, how much more the youngest? All of us leave something unfinished behind us, some dream interrupted or plan broken, some idea untried or interest unexplored. When we come to the end of our days we leave things begun but not ended, attempted but not accomplished, desired but not completed.
What becomes of all of this? What becomes of the passions we could not explore, the dreams we could not realize, the gifts we could not deploy for the good of others and the glory of God? Why would God give it only to take it away, bestow it only to have it go unused?
We would despair were it not for the promise of life that continues beyond the grave and extends into the world to come. We have no reason to believe that God will completely recreate us when he makes all things new. Rather, he will perfect us while leaving what makes us “us” intact. All those passions he conferred, gifts he bestowed, interests he assigned—surely they are not eradicated but simply carried over. There will be cooking in heaven, will there not—opportunities to express culinary creativity? There will be relationships in heaven, will there not—deep and abiding friendships, even if not marriage? The existence to come is within a new heaven and a new earth, but surely one that is very much like this one—or is, in fact, this one.
There is tragedy in every death, and it is not only the tragedy of bidding farewell to one we have loved. There is also the tragedy of so much that is left undone. But by faith we can believe that the things we have learned, loved, desired, and attempted will not be taken entirely away. The interests we have developed and passions we have explored will not prove to be wasted or eradicated. Rather, they will simply be carried over from here to there, from this place of interruption to that place where time will never end and death will never interrupt. As one pastor says, “One of the surprises of heaven will be our finding there the precious hopes, joys, and dreams which seemed to have perished on earth—not left behind—but all carried forward and ready to be given into our hands the moment we get home.” What a homecoming that will be!
