Death Is Swallowed Up In Victory

Yesterday, I was reading "Our Daily Bread" posts of the past four days and came across the one for Friday 16 Octobre, the day I went back to Batu Pahat after one month's absence. Since access to Facebook was blocked by both campuses during the working hours, I did not sign in to the website for weeks.

After I reached home, I surfed Internet and went to the website of this popular social network again. Ping's most recent message was something like this: "I was very down, so I came here to release my feeling. But I was shocked to learn that my good friend's boyfriend had been killed. Who is more sorrowful than she now?" Among her good friends, many were married. I had little idea of whom it could be.

Ping was also back from Johor Bahru a few hours later and told us about the incident which had just taken place earlier on the same day. Her friend SL's boyfriend was surfing Internet alone at a 24-hour fast food restaurant in Petaling Jaya at 4.30am when his laptop was snatched by a man. As SL's boyfriend was chasing after the man, the snatch thief's accomplice suddenly appeared and stabbed him in the waist three times. Both perpetrators managed to escape with their car. The victim was so seriously wounded that he died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

According to Ping, SL had been together with her boyfriend, who was a Christian, for seven, eight years. She attended the church service regularly and thought of getting baptized after their marriage planned for next year. A snatch theft shattered their dream to buy a house and start a family together.

I did not know SL well, nor had I ever met her boyfriend. So I did not follow Ping to the wake service in Grace Presbyterian church that night. The next afternoon I wanted to go with Ping, but the trip was cancelled because SL was not around. I thought of Teo Beng Hock's wife who must be still mourning for her late future husband's sudden death. I was somehow glad that SL was surrounded by Christians who could comfort her with God's word.

The author of that post of "Our Daily Bread" seemed to predict the physical death of SL's boyfriend. Ping said that SL's boyfriend had been a very kind person. The news report also mentioned that he always offered help to others, even strangers in need. His kind acts were the best testimonies of God's love. I imagined at his memorial service if all those who had been blessed by him were gathered to pay tribute to this follower of Jesus, there would be so much praise to our Lord.

Now what I can do for SL is to hold her in my prayer and hope that she continues to grow spiritually in the midst of her suffering. The Bible says that the body "is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body... However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual... Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed... The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ... Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." (1 Corinthians 15:56-58 NKJV)

Whether we die in an old, young, sick or wounded body, God has promised to give us a glorious body one day. Death is swallowed up in victory for those who have faith.