My dear son-in-law recently lost his father to age and illness. Jim was a godly, upright man who walked faithfully in the ways of the Lord, and is assuredly enjoying that walk in a full, new way - not as in a glass darkly. These things bring us temporary sorrow, and rightly so, but we Christians can also rest in the hope of glory, for death was only the short transition from this life of toil and care to one of glory and rest.
In The Seaboard Parish, George MacDonald writes of the resurrection,
"In the animal world ... you behold the goings of the Resurrection. Plainest of all, look at the story of the butterfly - so plain that the pagan Greeks called it and the soul by one name - Psyche. Psyche meant with them a butterfly or the soul, either. Look how the creeping thing, ugly to our eyes, so that we can hardly handle it without a shudder, finding itself growing sick with age, straightway falls to spinning and weaving at its own shroud, coffin, and grave, all in one-to prepare, in fact, for its resurrection; for it is for the sake of the resurrection that death exists.
Patiently it spins its strength, but not its life, away, folds itself up decently, that its body may rest in quiet till the new body is formed within it; and at length when the appointed hour has arrived, out of the body of this crawling thing breaks from the winged splendour of the butterfly....
... not the same body - a new built out of the ruins of the old - even as St. Paul tells us that it is not the same body we have in the resurrection, but a nobler body like ourselves, with all the imperfect and evil thing taken away. No more creeping for the butterfly; wings of splendour now. Neither yet has it lost the feet wherewith to alight on all that is lovely and sweet. 
Think of it - up from the toilsome journey over the low ground, exposed to the foot of every passer-by, destroying the lovely leaves upon which it fed, and the fruit which they should shelter, up to the path at will through the air, and a gathering of food which hurts not the source of it, a food which is but as a tribute from the loveliness of the flowers to the yet higher loveliness of the flower-angel: Is not this a resurrection?
Its children too shall pass through the same process, to wing the air of a summer noon, and rejoice in the atherial and the pure."
In case you were wondering, his tummy is on the left and his head is on the right. You can also see plainly that he is smiling for the camera.
"Little Boys are Treasures"
For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.
And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace." James 3:13-18
Michael by Rafael
Then the time came when three families from America came and all three little boys went to new homes in another land. But, they were no longer together.
Their new country was large and they were far apart now, but the new families understood how the boys loved one another and made arrangements for them stay in touch with each other. 
But, is this not like the great love and kindness of the Lord? That He would take orphaned children who were "unwanted" and not only give them families, but give them each other? How great is the love of the Father, a husband to the widow and a father to the fatherless! We will never be lost nor forsaken with such a Father as this.
Patiently it spins its strength, but not its life, away, folds itself up decently, that its body may rest in quiet till the new body is formed within it; and at length when the appointed hour has arrived, out of the body of this crawling thing breaks from the winged splendour of the butterfly....
... not the same body - a new built out of the ruins of the old - even as St. Paul tells us that it is not the same body we have in the resurrection, but a nobler body like ourselves, with all the imperfect and evil thing taken away. No more creeping for the butterfly; wings of splendour now. Neither yet has it lost the feet wherewith to alight on all that is lovely and sweet. 
Think of it - up from the toilsome journey over the low ground, exposed to the foot of every passer-by, destroying the lovely leaves upon which it fed, and the fruit which they should shelter, up to the path at will through the air, and a gathering of food which hurts not the source of it, a food which is but as a tribute from the loveliness of the flowers to the yet higher loveliness of the flower-angel: Is not this a resurrection?
