Crossing Over

Today would have been my mother's birthday. She's been gone now for almost eighteen years, but the memories never fade. They just soften with time.

The birthday might have passed virtually unnoticed if it hadn't been for today's verse.

"I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life" —John 5:24.

"Crossed over."

I held my mother's hand in her hospital room as she literally "crossed over." It was three days before Christmas. My father had died three months before, at the end of September, and my plan had been to have a special Christmas for mom. I didn't know that God had better plans.

When my mother accepted Christ, she "crossed over" from spiritual death to spiritual life. At that moment when she physically "crossed over" she passed from pain and sadness to health and joy. Not only did she get to spend Christmas with the Saviour who had provided her passage from death to life, she got to spend Christmas with her husband, my father.

Crossing over in Christ is indeed a beautiful thing, made so by the truth of the Gospel and the faithful love of God.