Love in Life and Death

To discover all the other exciting events happening in Adventist Heritage month, visit the Adventist Heritage website.

Sylvia Mendez is a pastor currently serving as the Women’s, Children’s and Family ministries director for the Australian Union Conference. She is devoted wife to Gabriel and mother to Sofia and Elizabeth. When she isn’t with people, she is doing her next favourite thing, reading books or writing. 

What is Adventist Heritage Daily Devotional?

Imagine a thriving Adventist movement in the South Pacific. Do images or stories come quickly to mind? This podcast recounts important events, stories and memories from Adventists throughout the South Pacific. These mission stories from our past are proof that the Adventist movement is alive and thriving. Listen to these podcasts and step out to join these pioneering Adventists with Jesus on His mission of making disciple-makers in the South Pacific.

“What kind of a loving God would allow the dead to watch the living suffer?” I heard this question during an evangelistic series in 2007. I had missed the live presentation and was listening to a recording of it in my office. As those words left the evangelists lips and dropped into my heart, I made a decision that changed the course of my life. I decided I wanted to be baptised and become a Seventh-day Adventist. The first in my family.

I grew up Greek Orthodox, I believed in God, vaguely, but didn’t really know who He was. God seemed distant and disinterested in the daily lives of people. We would see God when we died and went to heaven. That was all I knew.

When my grandmother died, I was often told she was watching me from heaven. This was used to encourage me when I behaved and to shame me when I didn’t. As I got older, I started wondering what kind of God would let the dead watch the living like some kind of soap opera drama. It seemed cruel.

So, when the biblical view of death was presented to me for the first time, I saw God with new eyes. I saw the God of love, who doesn’t punish people in a burning hell, and He also doesn’t punish people in heaven by having them watch the trials and sufferings of the living.

This is one of the most beautiful Bible teachings and beliefs we hold as a church. The reason I find it so powerful today is that so many people have a distorted view of God. Yet if they understood the love He has for us in life and in death, they would realise God is not in the business of torturing anyone, ever. The picture of a cruel God is erased.

God is love, and even though we must experience death, God’s true character is displayed as He lets us sleep a dreamless sleep. No pain, no suffering and no watching our loved ones. There is nothing to fear. And at just the right time, Jesus will wake us up and we will be with Him forever and ever. Amen.

Verse of the day:
“For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord for ever. Therefore encourage one another with these words” 1 Thessalonians 4:15 (NRSV).