They Live Forevermore
Every person who has lost someone close to them, and I suppose that includes nearly all of us, knows the heartache that comes from the death of a loved one. Such sorrow apparently was felt by Stephen Foster when he wrote “Gentle Annie.” And such feelings seem to have prompted him to ask, “Thou art gone … Annie … Shall we nevermore behold thee, never hear thy … voice again?”1
To that question and to all who wonder if there is life after death, we offer today our firm conviction that there is. Life does go on. It continues forever!
How sad it is for those who believe that life ends at the grave. Gratefully that isn’t so. There is no greater joy and inner peace than that which comes from a firm belief, even to the point of knowledge, that life is eternal.
As we honor those who have left us – whether they be fallen battlefield heroes, victims of accident or illness, or simply those who have completed their earthly stay – we must remember with assurance that they do live on.
The sorrow we feel should not be for them, nor for what they are missing, but rather for ourselves and our temporary separation from them. And then, in another way, we should feel a certain happiness instead of sadness – happiness because we knew them, and because, hopefully, we will find joy in recalling the choice and pleasant experiences that linger in our memories. But most important, happiness in the knowledge that some day we will renew our old acquaintances.
As G.S. Merriam once said, ” … to us here, death is the most terrible word we know. But when we have tasted its reality, it will mean to us birth, deliverance, a new creation of ourselves.”2
In the words of the song: “Their bodies are buried in peace, but their name,” and we would add their souls, “liveth evermore.”3
1Stephen Foster, Gentle Annie
2G. S. Merriam
3George Frederick Handel, Their Bodies Are Buried in Peace (See also Apocrypha: Ecclesiasticus 44:14)
May 28, 1972
Broadcast Number 2,227