When a believer in Yeshua dies

[Micha'el]

It is so important to be available to listen and to lend a helping hand. Staying quiet and listening to the bereaving is essential. Even just being there is a balm. Few perfectly chosen words are all that we can and should do.
For those outside, it is easy to make statements that declare our departed friend is in a better place. Some may even suggest rejoicing. Caution. These types of statements are not effectual.
If any have or sense you are about to experience this, how do or did you deal with this? Please be sensitive. Thank you.

[alon]

May 30, 2013 18:47:48 GMT -8 Micha'el said:

It is so important to be available to listen and to lend a helping hand. Staying quiet and listening to the bereaving is essential. Even just being there is a balm. Few perfectly chosen words are all that we can and should do.

Thanks for this. I need to get off my butt and go visit. I am not the most sensitive person in the world, according to my wife, my pastor, my friends, my children, my ... well, you get the picture. So I tend to not "bother" people when they are bereaved. But that probably isn't a good thing.

For those outside, it is easy to make statements that declare our departed friend is in a better place. Some may even suggest rejoicing. Caution. These types of statements are not effectual.

Yeah, well, that may not be good theology, and even if it is they may or may not agree. Honestly, I'm not sure about "Heaven" soon as we die. And there's a lot of more important things for me to tweak my understanding on than where I'll wait for eternity. So I agree, not a good thing to say.

If any have or sense you are about to experience this, how do or did you deal with this? Please be sensitive. Thank you.

Well, I just did, sort of. The rabbi from Wenatchee was speaking to the Nazarene church here on Shavuot Sunday and the pastors wife had to be rushed to the hospital by ambulance. She lost her baby. I wrote a card and left it on his desk the next day with a long message. We'd been through the same thing many years ago, so I just told them how it strengthened our marriage and helped us deal with almost losing another child later on. Made my wife tear up, so I must have done it close to right.

But you're right, I do need to go see them.

Dan C

[Frank T. Clark]

I have lost many to death. I believe and share with others that the Bible says they are asleep but they will rise again to meet their Saviour. Maybe I need to share some example texts?

Gen 47:30 But when I sleep with my fathers, thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying-place.' And he said: 'I will do as thou hast said.'

Deu 31:16 And the LORD said unto Moses: 'Behold, thou art about to sleep with thy fathers; and this people will rise up, and go astray after the foreign gods of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake Me, and break My covenant which I have made with them.

Ecc 9:5 For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.
Ecc 9:6 As well their love, as their hatred and their envy, is long ago perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.

Joh 11:11 These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.
Joh 11:12 Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well.
Joh 11:13 Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep.
Joh 11:14 Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.

Act 13:36 For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption:

1Co 15:51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
1Co 15:52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
1Co 15:53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
1Co 15:54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
1Co 15:55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
1Co 15:56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
1Co 15:57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Possibly the most comforting:

1Th 4:13 But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.
1Th 4:14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.
1Th 4:15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.
1Th 4:16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
1Th 4:17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
1Th 4:18 Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

That should bring comfort...

[tonga]

But you're right, I do need to go see them.

Dan C

This is the most important thing, and one of the reasons we
sit shiva/visit a shiva house. It's essential that the community
share in the mourning of someone who has lost their loved one.

[alon]

Jun 11, 2013 9:53:04 GMT -8 tonga said:

This is the most important thing, and one of the reasons we sit shiva/visit a shiva house. It's essential that the community share in the mourning of someone who has lost their loved one.

Thanks. Sometimes I wonder if this sense of community is one of the things we lost when the "church" was "de-Judaized" (read that "purged"/"sanitized"/"paganized"/"ized" to death) by the Roman Church et all. Of course, at the same time the Jewish sense of community was, by necessity, strengthened in many ways.

One of the reasons I've always been anti-anti-Semitism, and one of the things that led me to look at Messianic theology. While you were certainly done wrong, we didn't do ourselves any favors in the process.

Dan C