"Winter into Winter"

Is that a deathbed where a Christian lies?  

Yes, but not his—’tis Death itself that dies.  

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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I’m fascinated by stories of "unreached people groups” and the means by which the gospel finds its way into these cultures. This week, while reading a history of England, I came across this report:

In 731, a British abbot, known to later generations as the Venerable Bede, wrote the first history of England: The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. (The world also owes to Bede the practice of reckoning years from the birth of Christ.) 

Bede tells us that King Edwin, a 7th century king of North Umbria, called a council of his wisest retainers to consider their response to the evangel. Bede reports that one of the king's chief men gave the following speech, in which he compared our life to that of a sparrow flying through a hall in winter:         

The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, is like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the house wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your eldermen and theons, while the fire blazes in the midst, and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter into winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all. If, therefore, this new doctrine tells us something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.  

How dark and bleak. And how tragic. One brief moment of existence, “but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all.” Why go on when every breath we draw is taking us into an uncertain, terrifying future? 

I think of friends and neighbors around me, living “without hope” (Ephesians  2:12), “passing from winter into winter again,” not knowing what is to follow. But, thank God, by His mercy we can be "born again into a life full of hope. through Christ’s rising again from the dead! We can now hope for a perfect inheritance beyond the reach of change and decay, kept in Heaven for us. In the meantime we will be kept by the power of God operating through our faith, till we enter fully into the salvation which is being held in trust for us at last” (1 Peter 1:3-5).

This is indeed “the doctrine that tells us something more certain” that “seems justly to deserve to be followed.” Heaven is “kept” for us and we are “kept" for heaven. It’s an open invitation; the door is wide open. Bede tells us that King Edwin entered in and many of the people of North Umbria with him.

Jesus said,, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25,26). This is the unshakable guarantee, the rock-solid assurance, the blood-bought promise. “Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” 

Do you believe this? There is nothing “more certain.”

David Roper
2.13.22