"Then Eli'sha prayed, and said, 'O LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes that
he may see.' So the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw;
and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round
about Eli'sha." -- 2 Kings 6:17 (RSV)
I've experienced another surge of deaths, the most concentrated one yet. In the last six days I've attended four funerals with another one coming next week. Three of them were women in their 90s and one was a woman who had been on dialysis for a long time. The fifth, though, was a 64-year-old man who dropped dead of an apparent heart attack, the second heart attack victim in our parish in a month. At times like this, the veil between this world and the next seems very thin.
I've reflected on the passage above before (Feb. 14, 2012) from the standpoint of spiritual warfare. But there is another aspect of it that is standing out for me right now. When the Lord opened the eyes of Elisha's servant, he saw that he was standing in the midst of a great army, an army which had been there all along.
Again, I am struck by the thought that Heaven is not far away "out there" somewhere. Rather, it is all around us. We are always walking in the presence of the Lord and all His hosts and saints, including those we know who have gone before us. Though they may be blocked from our sight most of the time, we are not blocked from theirs. They see us and, because they are members of the Body of Christ as we are, they love us and fight for us, fight with much greater power than we do, because while we are walking by faith, they are walking by sight.
