Eternity In Our Hearts

Saw this memorial plaque at Tecman when I was down today, and the writing on it just somehow really captured me. Some of you have probably seen it before, but it was the first time for me.


The Broken Chain
We little knew that morning that
God was going to call your name.
In life we loved you dearly.
In death we do the same.

It broke our hearts to lose you.
You did not go alone,
For part of us went with you
The day God called you home.

You left us peaceful memories.
Your love is still our guide.
And though we cannot see you,
You are always at our side.

Our family chain is broken
And nothing seems the same,
But as God calls us one by one,
The Chain will link again.


I stood there for quite a while… thinking… of what someone very dear shared with me recently just how much she dreaded the day her grandmother would depart from this earth, and how much she wishes she would receive Christ so that there’s a reunion in store for them. I thought of how that day by the sea at Sembawang Park I was thinking to myself how I would have reacted to the sudden loss of anyone so very dear to myself, and if I would be able to see past the grief to the reunion awaiting. And in those few seconds that felt like minutes as I stood there just soaking in the words on the plaque, I could picture in my head the different people whom I don’t think I could stand to lose… whom I would rather it had been me who had departed instead.

To makes things worse, the very recent passing of John Spencer of The West Wing, and the way they wrote that into the script itself again surfaced in my mind. I wondered abt Bartlett and the way they captured the grief of a president who lost his best friend… and then I asked myself just how much more the grief must be to have walked the greater part of my life with a few dear to me, and to suddenly feel the vacuum of their loss. Just leaving the country to study overseas proved to be Mission Impossible to me. What more the farewell that is for a lifetime.

Maybe its the fact that The West Wing has just screened its last episode ever that’s gotten me this way also… I’m just really sorry to see it go. Seven full seasons. And I really loved every single one of them.

I guess I was really very much captured by the plaque because it again reminded me that there is an eternal perspective to consider. That the chain now being slowly broken is being linked back together again on the other side of the world. And the work of the Christian is but to try and make sure as many people make it back again into that chain over there.

Weimin told me last night that "all things will work out in His time" to encourage me, when I was again back at my park. Unknown to her, its one of my favorite verses, from one of my favorite books. The full verse itself, coupled with what I read today on the plaque made the whole moment doubly poignant.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
-Ecclesiates 3:11

Eternity in our hearts. Everytime I can’t fathom what God’s doing in my life, I’m thankful for my restlessness with this life, because I know that deep inside my heart there is a longing for an eternity in store for me, far beyond my reach, and farther beyond my understanding.