I just returned from Carbondale, Illinois, where I attended a visitation and funeral service for Mary Sue Hines. Her husband, Ron, worked with me at Southeast Missouri State University for 36 years and I was pleased to join a pew of fellow employees in paying tribute to her. As we rode home together after the service, our fellow travelers talked about death and life and service. The minister said in his sermon that Ron called the minister on Thursday and said, "Mary Sue has gone to heaven to be with her Lord." This statement surprised us all because none of us had ever heard Ron say anything that was remotely theological. So the discussion became all about the sentence!
The discussion kept going. Do people get "theological" when they face death around them? Do they suddenly want to know if there is anything out there and try to uncover, in a week's time, what takes years of living to uncover? Do they want to examine the inner workings of the clock before the alarm goes off for them? Whichever or whatever, nothing stirs up a desire for theological answers like the feeling that the hand of death is lurking closer and closer. As the agnostic said, "Perhaps I've overlooked something along the way!"
The Lutheran minister gave two Scriptures (both of which Mary Sue had selected prior to her death) and they both gave clues to her theology of death:
l. John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." The first clue to her theology was that Christ was "her" Lord; she had put her trust in him along the way. She claimed that promise! She planned on continuing her journey in another place.
The second clue I got from this simple verse I had memorized in the Primary Department of lst Baptist Church was that God was an active agent in all this. There was nothing passive about his act and he gave his Son so that those who put their trust in him would never die but would have everlasting life.
Pretty strong inner clock workings! And this was validated by a second Scripture in the service.
2. Romans 8:38 "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
So, go on and take this body to Blairsville Cemetery and bury it there. But Mary Sue Hines had her own ideas and her own theology of death. She knew, by the Scriptures she chose, that nothing would separate her from the love of God.
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