"Meet Your Maker"

You know, that phrase is used kind of jokingly in movies and on television as a quasi-threat or some such. But it has occurred to me that it is truly an awesome group of words.

My cousin, Angela, met her Maker this morning after an 18-month battle with cancer. I know we hear of people dying, passing away, even going home, on a regular basis, but to put it in those words, meet your Maker, and of course, for it to be some of my own flesh and blood, (could I use just a few more commas in this sentence?) I'm really in awe of what she experienced today.

I talked with her mom last night, and we just got excited for Angela that she would be free from pain and with her dad and two brothers who went to heaven before she did. Then we started talking about being with Jesus.

Being with her Maker.

Face to face.

In His presence.

Forever.

It's an awesome, awesome thing to contemplate--or to cogitate on. I had an elderly aunt who, when she had something to think about, would "cogitate on that for a while." So I guess I've been cogitating on that phrase for a while.

I get all weepy if I cogitate on it for very long at the time. Not because I am mourning but because the magnitude of my Father's love for me, and for us all, simply overwhelms me.

When I was 17, my 21-year-old brother met his Maker. And even then, God overwhelmed me with His love. I was in awe that someone I knew and loved and had grown up with was at that moment in the presence of the King, the Creator of the Universe, God Almighty. People would say, "Yes, but don't you miss him? Aren't you sad that he's not here anymore?" Of course I missed him, and still do sometimes. I even still dream that he didn't really die and that he comes back after being gone for a long time. But that didn't and doesn't stop me from embracing the joy that I feel knowing that he is WITH THE FATHER and the awe I feel that God loved my brother so much that he didn't want to wait any longer to have him there in heaven.

My cousin had three children who are now "motherless." But, you know what? God can fill that void, and He will if He is allowed to. People say, "But oh, they need a mother's love; these are difficult years for them." Did God not create them? Is He so small that He can't fill in where a mother's love is absent? I think not. His picture is so much bigger than ours, and I don't have to understand it. I have to trust Him and know that He knows better than anyone here what all of us need. The rain falls on the just and on the unjust, but I WILL TRUST HIM. Because He is God. It's really as simple as that.