Our dear friend Heigo died last week. We visited him on Sunday, and had a time of worship and study in the Word. There was no indication of failing health; he was in good spirits as usual. So on Wednesday when we got the call we were surprised, but not sad, because we know he is in a much better place. We will greatly miss him until we see him again! I tried to explain to my 3-year old with her vocabulary:
“Heigo is all gone.”
“Oh.”
“Heigo is with Jesus!”
“Heigo with Jesus?”
“Yes. Jesus is in heaven.”
“Oh. Heaven?”
I pointed to the sky. Since Jesus will come back in the clouds that’s where we should look anyways. About a five minutes later, Olivia says, in third person,
“Olivia wants to go with Jesus! “Pleeeeease?”
The mother in me wanted to shush her, in case Jesus should hear and want to take her home. No mother can prevent that little catch in their throat at the thought of the death of their child. These few short years Matt and I have with her, to rear and nurture her, are going to be just that…SHORT. But I came to my senses and was happy for the opportunity to introduce the most important subject in life to her. I need to prepare her to accept the gospel, and myself to see Jesus, so that we live without fear of death!
“Mommy wants Olivia to see Jesus!”
Olivia kind of sighed, and that was the end of that conversation. She did, however, develop a fascination with airplanes the rest of the week, and how they go in and out of the clouds. Her mind is so tender. For the longest time I thought my papa lived just up there on the moon when he died. On nights when the moon would glow in the Minnesota sky I would strain my eyes to see if he was waving a flag for me to see. Someone had pointed to the sky to me, too, when he died. His death prepared me to accept Christ, simply because I already had faith to believe in heaven and life after death!
Some day I do hope she accepts God’s gift of salvation and goes to heaven, but not just to escape hell. I want her to look forward to seeing the one person who made heaven possible, Jesus. I want her to look forward to being reunited with believers that have gone before us, that great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1) that the Bible speaks of, who are greatly interested in what we are doing to prepare for eternity, and who I believe are cheering us on. In these days of death and destruction, it is just irresponsible for anyone to not think seriously about life after death, and to not prepare for it. We spend our entire lives preparing for retirement, working so hard to save and invest in our future. Why would we neglect so great a salvation from eternal suffering? And as a believer, I need to remember that every day is full of opportunities to prepare myself - so that I will not be ashamed of the life I lived.
If time permits in the next few weeks I'll post a short slideshow honoring the memory of Heigo. He was such a wonderful encouragement to us and our work here. It was a privilege to know him!
