Transcendent Friendships – III

When our sister-in-law Janet was visiting us a few weeks ago and we were talking about her husband Rod (Vickie’s brother) going to be with Jesus she shared a facet of Rod’s homecoming we weren’t aware of, Rod raised his arms when he shouldn’t have been able to raise them.

We knew Rod raised his arms, but we didn’t know he shouldn’t have able to raise them. Vickie and I knew that as he was lying unconscious in his bed at home, blankets wrapped around him, friends and family at his side, that he suddenly opened his eyes, pushed the covers back, looked upward with his eyes fixed on someone or something, lifted his arms in the air…and passed from this life into the next.

What we didn’t know is that Rod had not been able to lift and stretch his arms for his entire adult life due to multiple breaks sustained as a child. Rod and Janet had consulted physicians for a remedy but the surgical options were so radical that Rod chose to live within his physical limitations rather than undergo extensive surgeries.

The people in Rod’s bedroom that morning saw Rod’s eyes open, his face light up, his eyes gaze on the unseen, and his hands and arms push back the covers; they saw him raise his arms and hands in the direction of his fixed gaze, and they saw him lay his body down and go to be with Jesus. The doctors told Rod and Janet that Rod’s death would be painful – it was not. Rod should not have awaken from his coma, he should not have opened his eyes, and he most certainly should not have raised arms which had not been raised in decades…but he did.

I hope I’ll never take for granted my ability to raise my hands and arms in praise and worship, and I hope I’ll never miss an opportunity to do so – after all, worship here is but a foretaste of worship in eternity, it is heaven invading earth, beginning with my clay vessel.

I wonder if Rod is known in heaven as “The guy who never puts his arms down.”