Comfort For Troubled Hearts

"Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also...Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you..." (John 14:1-3, 27)

Jesus knew that after his death, burial, resurrection and ascension into heaven his followers would still be troubled.  So he left them, and us, with the peace that comes from the promise of his return.  His words were given to comfort them as they testified to the world of his resurrection and awaited his return.

After many years had passed and Jesus had not yet returned, some of those followers had fallen "asleep".  Jesus and Paul both referred to death as sleep.  So Paul was confronted with a question about what would happen to those who had fallen asleep when Jesus returned. His answer to them is one of the most comforting passages of Scripture in the Bible...

"...we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words."  (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)

Many have died over the past 2000 years, but the promise of his return and our rising together to meet him in the air still comforts and gives us peace.

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