Oneness

Sometime ago, I was flying back from Pontiac, Michigan where I spoke at the funeral of a dear, sweet lady who touched the hearts of hundreds of people over her lifetime of eighty-four years.  She had been my secretary for a couple of years and blessed me in ways that led me closer to godliness, as she helped me see the possibilities of serving others so they might have better, happier and healthier lives. 

As I spoke, her husband wept, often loudly, for the pain he was bearing was real and deep.  They had been husband and wife for more than sixty-four years.  One cannot share his or her life with another human being that many years without becoming an intimate part of them. Becoming one flesh, if you would.  Husbands and wives become one and are tremendously blessed by that oneness.  So, it is easy to understand why a person would weep when one partner or the other passes from this life.  In fact, why more people don’t scream as they are ripped apart, when their oneness is shattered, is a mystery to me.  If I caught my arm in a conveyor of some kind and it was ripped from my body, it would be, I imagine, less painful than the heartache of oneness separation.  I can imagine myself finding it difficult to catch my breath as my heart raced in trepidation and even anger at my great loss.  So when I heard the moans and sorrow of that eighty-four year old man I was moved as I tried to grasp an understanding of his pain.

Does it not strike you as odd that God would ask us to become one with a woman or man as we are wed to them and then, later, in the holy, even wonderful plan of God He separates us through the terrible process of death?  Are you not struck by the horror of that?  It is not that God would be cruel to us.  No.  In fact, I believe the oneness of marriage is a prologue to the great oneness that we will share with Him in the eternity planned for us.  We were not meant to live this life forever, but to live in preparation for the great life to come.  This is a schooling; a learning process.  It is not the beginning and end.  So we are not to think God, our Father, would do something that was meant to be overly cruel, but something that is meant to grow us into the greatest of relationship with the Eternal.

Should I outlive my wife my heart will break, as it should, but not with the thoughts of one who has no hope or one who thinks the Creator is some villain who takes pleasure in the pain of His creation.  No.  It will be as one who knows there will be a tomorrow and it will outshine any today I’ve ever had. I will see her again!

–Josiah Tilton