I recently spoke to a friend and his wife who had gone sky-diving. I asked them what it was like. Weightlessness. Exhilaration. Dropping from10,000 feet up at 120 mph. Your cheeks are being pulled toward your ears. We will all fly away, one day, and we can only imagine that feeling of exhilaration!
According to wikipedia.org, “I’ll Fly Away”, is a hymn written in 1929 by Albert E. Brumley and published in 1932 by the Hartford Music company in a collection titled Wonderful Message. Brumley’s writing was influenced in part by an older secular ballad. Albert E. Brumley has been described as the “pre-eminent gospel songwriter” of the 20th century with over 600 published songs. He wrote “I’ll Meet You in the Morning” and “This World is Not my Home.” He said he came up with the idea of “I’ll Fly Away” while picking cotton on the family farm in Oklahoma.
Think of the words to this song and consider these passages…
GOD’S CELESTIAL SHORE
The distance between earth and heaven has been frequently portrayed as a huge ocean. When John has his vision of God in Revelation, he sees Him surrounded by something like a sea of glass, like crystal (4:5-6). Be that as it may, the most beautiful picture of heaven we have in Scripture is no doubt found in Revelation 21 and 22. Consider these verses: 21:1-2, 10-12, 19-21, 22-26; 22:1-5. Once again, we remind ourselves that that is our destination.
THE SHADOWS HAVE GROWN – LIKE A BIRD HAS FLOWN
Our lives are like a shadow that appears for a short while. One of Job’s friends, Bildad, reminded him in Job 8:9: “For we are but of yesterday and know nothing, for our days on earth are a shadow.” The psalmist (102:11) wrote: “My days are like an evening shadow; I wither away like grass.”
The image is of us growing old – the sun is beginning to set on our life. But we know that the time for our liberation is getting close so that we may leave the prison we call life and be free to soar into the arms of the Heavenly Father. Consider the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:1-5.
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JUST A FEW MORE WEARY DAYS
Life is passing by quickly and we each are moving along the road of life to our final destination. Some of us are young and healthy. Some of us are not young and not as healthy as we would like. Some of us have events in our future that will – at that time – make us sad.
Bad things – maybe not catastrophic things – bad things will happen if you live long enough. It’s the nature of this world. God did not create it to be the perfect place for us. This world is not the best of all possible worlds.
This is the best of all possible worlds for the intention for which God designed it – to make us more like Him in the image of Jesus Christ.
JOYS SHALL NEVER END
Finally, Brumley invites us to contemplate the idea that we’ll be where “joys shall never end.” All the things we enjoy in this life are just a prelude to the endless joy we’ll experience once we arrive in the presence of God. Take a look again at 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17.
–Paul Holland
