2022.10.22/23
From the Pastor’s Desk: Rev. Raphael Chow

Dear brothers and sisters of RCAC,

People were following:

The family-some crying, Some pretending to cry;

Friends-some grieving, Some bored or chatting.

Leaving the cemetery, some of the family were sobbing: “All is finished.”

Others were sniffling: “Come, come, my dear, courage, it’s finished!”

Some friends murmured: “Poor man, that’s how we’ll all finish.”

And others sighed in relief: “Well, it’s over.”

And I was thinking that everything was just beginning.

Yes, he had finished the last rehearsal, but the eternal show was

just beginning.

The years of training were over, but the eternal work was about

to commence.

He had just been born to life,

The real life,

Life that’s going to last,

Life eternal.

As if there were dead people!

There are no dead people, Lord.

There are only the living, on earth and beyond.

Death is real, Lord,

But it’s nothing but a moment,

A second, a step,

The step from provisional to permanent,

From temporal to eternal.

So in the death of the child the adolescent is born,

from the caterpillar emerges the butterfly,

from the grain the full-blown ear.

Death, grotesque character, bogey-man of little children, nonexistent

phantom,

I don’t take you seriously,

But I am disgusted with you.

You terrify the world,

You frighten and deceive men,

And yet your only reason for existing is life, and you are not

able to take from us those that we love.

13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. 14 For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him… 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” (1 Thessalonians 4.13-17)

Dear Lord, I want to love you more.

Your servant in Christ,
PastorRaphael Chow