Death's sting

 I’m sitting here looking out my kitchen nook window as the sun rises, a few clouds slowly roll by as a flock of swallows dive and dart in the beautiful light that gracefully radiates through a partially cloudy sun rise. It’s pleasing to me that each new morning brings more of God’s eternal grace and mercy. I’m aware of my breathing as my chest inflates and exhales and think how many things there are to be thankful for.

“I’m still in my fifties” I think to myself and take another sip from my favorite mug that holds the rich, dark Sumatran coffee that was dispensed from a one cup coffee machine. I glance at a picture of myself with a couple of my kids taken twenty years ago and realize that I am helpless to stop the years from their fleeting escape. 

Several distant mountain ranges are hidden in the fog that blankets them in varies thicknesses and  hint at and reveal their distance from me. I recall that only the day before I was hiking up and around the peak of the furthest range. But today they seem so far away, hidden in the mist, untouchable and forbidden. 

Just like the mist that hides the mountains from my physical eyes there is also an invisible veil that separates us from eternity.  Sometimes the veil thins a bit allowing us to glimpse into it but never fully lifts allowing us full access for a short visit. It’s a like a narrow European one-way street, only wide enough for a one horse drawn cart, that forces us to go in only one direction with no chance to turn around in traffic.

Growing old and aging is not what we were told it would be. The golden years are more like flakes of fool’s gold that float away from us in the fast moving stream of life. So this morning it’s time’s sharp arrow that I am feeling as the dark, rich Sumatran coffee begins to resurrect me last night’s slumber

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So don’t marvel that Jesus once told a Jewish religious leader that he must be born again! The Lord explained to him that what is born of water is physical and that flesh and blood cannot pass through the veil that leads into the eternal spiritual realm.

The apostle Paul, after being pelted with stones and left for dead, was taken up in the spirit into the third heaven. There he witnessed such things so beautiful that he could not put them into words. He said it wouldn’t be lawful even to utter the words. Whatever Paul saw through the veil was enough to empower him to live a life full of travel, adventure and risk for the sake of spreading the gospel.

So what’s the good news?

The good news is that there no longer a sting to death, that annihilation no longer has to be a fear for the pilgrim who is traveling through this physical world. But what’s the catch?

In his letter to the church in Corinth Paul writes “But someone will say, how are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come from? Foolish one, what you sow is not what is made alive unless it dies. And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain-perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body.”

Have you ever stopped to consider the miracle that happens each time a seed springs to life? First a lifeless kernel is placed in the soil then with the right amount of water, warmth and sunlight life begins to sprout up from what was once a dried, lifeless seed. Science can observe and explain the process a seed goes through but are at a loss for words when it comes to the life giving spark that comes from the Creator of our universe.

Paul goes on to in his letter to the Corinthian church to apply this truth to our human existence. “So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”

In closing the words of Jesus “Let not your hearts be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself.”