"Where O death is your victory?"

This last week has been a refreshing time for me. Except for being in a new house, Christmas has remained similiar to previous family Christmases. This Christmas has a special significance because I will be leaving for two years and this time next year will find me in Suriname minus my family. I have given signficant thought to what I want to say to each member of my family to let them know I love them and all they mean to me. This brings me to my Grandpa, Robert Cotton.

My Grandpa is 81 years old and in failing health. Earlier this week he was admitted to the hospital where he is currently staying. As is true for most people venturing into their eighth decade of life, he has a number of bodily ailments which put him in persistent pain most days. When asked how he's doing, his favorite response laced with a touch of humor is: "I'm doing no good". Unlike the rest of the family, every year has seen him grow progressively imobile, sick and helpless. He's spending this Christmas lying on a hospital bed in a drug induced sleep.

I understand that my Grandpa's days are on this planet are short and I have faced the reality that he may not be alive when I get back in two years. While visiting Grandpa in the hospital yesterday and seeing him breathing laboriously, pale and incoherent I was faced with the inevitability of my own death and the disheartening end we will all one day experience. Later I went home and was reading I Corinthians 15 and the Lord spoke as he always does through his word.

"For since death came through a man, the ressurection of the dead came through a man, the ressurection of the dead also comes through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive."v.21-22

Chapter 15 is so powerful in that the Apostle Paul gives two drastic realities regarding Jesus' resurrection from the dead. There's no middle ground. If resurrection from the dead is untrue then:

• our preaching and faith are useless. v.14
• we are false witnesses about God. v.15
• Christ has not been raised from the dead. v. 16,13
• your faith is futile
• you are sitll in your sins. v.17
• those already died who believed in Christ are lost v.18
• We are to be pitied more than all men. v.19

But CHRIST HAS BEEN RAISED and as it says in v. 26 "The last enemy to be destroyed is death."

My Grandpa is a believer and I find comfort as do all Christians do in the promise of eternal life to those who put their faith in the Son. I don't know how many days my Grandpa has left on this earth any more than I have knowledge of my own. I do know that man was not created to die and therefore he can never find any solace or peace about it apart from faith in Jesus. In him we have hope that will not disappoint.

As I celebrate Christmas I hope to better grasp the magnitude of that serene night over 2,000 years ago when our only hope for salvation came to Earth in the form of baby Jesus. And 33 years late what was written would be fulfilled:

"Where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting?"

"Death has been swallowed up in victory!"

I'm going to visit Grandpa in a few hours and I hope he is conscious so I can read him a letter I wrote to him with the intention of giving it to him before I left on January 5th. Please pray for him and my remaining days we will spend together.