Meetings in Life, Death
Rev. Donald Rose , Assistant Pastor, Bryn Athyn Cathedral, Pennsylvania
God provided a beautiful woman and Adam exclaimed, “This is now bone of
my bone and flesh of my flesh.” The Bible then says that a man shall be
joined to his wife” and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24)
 Thereafter in the Bible we see meetings and we see partings, sometimes
with the hope of meeting again.
We don’t know how Abram and Sarai met. We know that she was a strikingly
beautiful woman and that when she died it was cause for mourning and
weeping on the part of her husband. It is said that Isaac, their son,
was comforted after his mother’s death. Comforted, yes, by meeting the
beautiful Rebekah.
Rebekah’s family asked, “Will you go with this man? And she said, I will
go.” (Genesis 24:58) Upon seeing Isaac she took a veil and covered
herself. “She became his wife and he lover her.” Concerning their family
burial place Jacob said, “There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife;
there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife.” (Genesis 49:31)
When Jacob met his own wife, Rachel, he wept for joy. (Genesis 29:11)
Eventually the story recounts the sad event on a journey near Bethlehem.
Rachel died giving birth. “As her soul was departing, “ she conferred a
name on her last son.” (Genesis 31:18)
Rachel’s tomb is to this day a sacred place for Christians, Jews and
Muslims alike. The Christmas story recalls Rachel weeping (Matthew 3:18)
and Matthew quotes the prophet Jeremiah on Rachel’s tragic departure.
But Jeremiah’s words stir hope. “Refrain your voice from weeping and
your eyes from tears….There is hope in your future, says the Lord.”
(Jeremiah 31:17)
The deep hope at the time of death is about meeting again. As King David
said as he ceased mourning for his infant son, “I shall go to him, but
he shall not return to me.” (2Samuel 12:23)
Theologian Emanuel Swedenborg writes that true love endures. Endures not
only through thick and thin but through life and death. In the case of a
devoted couple death is not a complete separation. “The two are still
not separated, after the death of one, since the spirit of the deceased
dwells continually with the spirit of the one not yet deceased, and this
even until the death of the other, when they meet again, and reunite
themselves, and love each other more tenderly than before, because in a
spiritual world.” (Married Love, paragraph 321)
We also read of young people in the life to come who had not yet met
partners. “They meet somewhere as if by fate, see each other, and then,
as from a kind of instinct, they know that they are mates, and they
think inwardly within themselves, ‘She is mine’ and ‘He is mine.’ After
a while they speak to each other and become betrothed.” (Married Love,
paragraph 229)
Thanks be to God for bringing about meetings, exciting and comforting,
in this world and in the world to come.
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