John 14: 18-19 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.”

An orphan is someone who has lost both parents to death. It is an irreversible situation. Obviously, the parents are never coming back. Jesus did not say he was not leaving the disciples. He said he wasn’t leaving them as orphans. It’s true he was going to die, but he wasn’t going to stay dead. “I will come to you.”

Orphans have always been a picture of the weakest, poorest, most vulnerable people in the world. They are mistreated, neglected, abused. Think of the orphans from literature and the movies: Cosette in Les Miserables, Oliver Twist, Little Orphan Annie and the other children who shared her orphanage, Hugo Cabret (from the movie Hugo), Cinderella, Harry Potter, Mowgli, Tarzan, even the young Bruce Wayne who becomes Batman. Little children deprived of their natural protectors and providers will struggle to survive.

Have you ever felt like that as a Christian, when you had to take the lonely stand for what is right; or when your faith has been mocked? All but one of these men in the room with Jesus were going to die for their faith, and tens of thousands of people a year still do around the world according to the organization Voice of the Martyrs. While we wait for Jesus to return, we can look alone and abandoned.

But we aren’t orphaned, because Jesus will come. More than that, “Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.” Note that Jesus doesn’t say, “Because I rise, you also will rise,” although that is true, and it is part of what he is promising here. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is a promise and guarantee of our resurrection from the dead.

But beyond the resurrection there is life, life worth living, life lived in the full experience of God’s love, life lived in the full realization of our potential, life lived in the full glory of what each of us was individually made to be. Even now, by faith we live under his love in the comfort of his grace and the hope of his return. He hasn’t left us as orphans. He has left us as heirs of glory and owners of life that never ends.