Saturd2025 Pentecost Devotions III
Saturday, November 22
Luke 23:39-43
39 One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.” 43 He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
“A thousand ages in your sight are like an evening gone. Short as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun.” (Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past)
What happens to us after we die? This question has plagued human beings since the first one among us died. Almost all of us have wrestled with this question once or twice in our own life. The problem is that no one on this side of the grave knows the answer.
Jesus tells the man who is being crucified beside him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Does that mean that our souls go straight to heaven when we die? What about the bodily resurrection on the last day? It’s impossible for us to know.
When my mind runs away with questions about life after death, I remind myself that, while we live in this world, we’re bound by time and space. God is not limited by either of these things. When our life in this world ends, we enter into eternity, which has been described as the eternal now. I don’t need to understand this now because Jesus has promised that all will be well.
Lord Jesus: Thank you for welcoming us into eternity through your death and resurrection for our sake. AMEN
ay, November 22
-medium wp-image-1045″ />