I just came across a list I started years ago of the friends I’ve made at the nursing home over the last 16 years. What great memories! I can still see many of them in my mind’s eye, still recall conversations we enjoyed, events we shared, gifts we gave each other.  
 
A handful of these lovely people have left for other places – their own houses, or assisted living facilities, or even their childhood homes. But most have escaped this earthly veil entirely, many of them to the eternal life that Jesus promised all who repent and trust in Him.
 
I went through my list slowly, thinking about how much I’ve missed each one, realizing anew that I will surely be seeing this one and that one again when I die. Maybe there are even ever-changing welcoming committees in heaven, so that every believer is greeted by the brothers and sisters in Christ whom he knew and loved on earth.
 
What a happy thought that is – one that makes the prospect of death’s process even less frightening, since they’ve all been through it and emerged whole, healthy and joyful forevermore.
 
Of course, the most overwhelming sight will be of Jesus Himself – “the One who died for me,” as Jimmie Davis wrote in the beautiful gospel hymn “I Bowed on My Knee and Cried Holy.” After all, as the apostle Paul assured believers in 2 Corinthians 5:8, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.  
 
But how wonderful it will be to see all these old friends once again, rejoicing in “the glorious liberty of the children of God.”
 
If you’d like to expand your own heavenly welcoming committee, why not begin visiting folks at a nearby nursing home soon? Here's how to get started.

This is a picture of my Granny, snapped sometime in the 1950s. She would have been in her mid to late 60s then -- just a few years older than I am now. 

Meta Foth wasn't a beauty by today's standards, was she? Overweight from all that good German food, wearing powerful glasses to make up for the removal of lenses clouded by cataracts, and owning a "house dress" wardrobe tiny enough to fit into the little closet in her bedroom, right next to mine.

She was no great genius, as far as I know. She had run a florist shop with her husband in their native Germany, and they opened another here in Plymouth, Wis., after immigrating to the Land of Opportunity in the 1920s. But by the time I knew her, she was living with us in Green Bay. She liked her soap operas and her afternoon naps, and greatly enjoyed her weekly bus trips downtown to the restaurant on the top floor of Prange's department store. She was somebody there; the waitresses knew her name (Granny, not Meta) and on those glorious occasions when she took me along, I could tell that they all liked her very much.  
​I don't remember her having a great sense of humor, or being one to roll around on the floor to play with her grandkids, either. She was old, after all.

But oh, how I loved her. 

And love her still, of course. She left this earth in 1973, having already buried three of her four children. But I can't wait to see her again in heaven, healthy and happy and finally being every bit as important as the next person, because she is, like everyone else there, a child of the King.

In the meantime, I look in the mirror and see signs of her there, as well as of my dad, one of the three children she buried. It reminds me of the most wonderful childhood, and the most wonderful parents and Granny, anyone could ever want. It's pretty hard to get too upset about wrinkles or jowls or bags when they all point to such happiness long ago -- and, even better, to future joy forevermore. ​

Way too often, sadness, loneliness and fear are the order of the day for the elderly. But it doesn't have to be that way; anyone, at any age, can enter by the narrow gate to full confidence that the best is yet to come forevermore.   

Until then, consider this excerpt from Heaven Without Her (p. 243):

"In honor of our trip to Wausau with my mother’s ashes, Jenny had given me a CD by a Christian singer named Crystal Lewis. Jen pointed especially to the title song, “Beauty for Ashes,” which reassures the child of God that He will heal all sorrows:

He gives beauty for ashes 
Strength for fear 
Gladness for mourning 
Peace for despair

"It took me a while to make the connection, but I finally realized that this chorus was based on Isaiah 61:3 -- part of that hope-tinged passage that someone had read at my mother’s funeral. 

"I listened to this song again and again. It was true: He was giving me beauty and strength, gladness and peace. 

"But it’s only the beginning of what promises to be the happiest ending of all."
​