And they should go together for Christians.
We as Christians have nothing to lose, and everything to gain from death. The end of the race, and the point at which we will be able to glorify God without end, without our flesh to harden the task and weigh us down. How against society--to welcome death!
But death is the enemy; how can we welcome it?
Today is All Saints Day, and even the Protestant Church celebrated this holiday at one time (some denominations still do). A day to remember and celebrate the ones who have gone before us.
"Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."And so, I will remember.
~Hebrews 12:1-2 NKJV
Today is the eight month anniversary of the day that I was told a coworker of a friend was shot to death in Iraq, teaching in an English-speaking school just a few hours before. How do you reconcile hope with the seeming hopelessness of death? How are we supposed to say that everything will be okay, when that does NOT appear to be the case? But there is still hope.
Next week I will travel to Indiana and meet someone who nearly died twice this year. My parents' friends' son. The one with a tumor on his brain, the one who had surgeries, and the one who cannot swallow or walk. He has hope.
This month is my grandma's birthday month. The grandma who died in Washington while we sat in Ohio, praying. And how on earth am I expected to have hope? But still, hope is there, in me.
Because. Because death has been defeated.
"For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord"And if I am 100% convinced of that, then I can sleep in peace tonight.
~Romans 8:38-39
“O Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?”
~1 Corinthians 15:55
Last night I was thinking of heaven, and I realized how sorely I've neglected to look forward to it. Envisioning what heaven will be like is sometimes hard, specifically how much more wonderful it will be than earth. Earth is just so neat sometimes - but if what God has given us now is good, how much better it will be in heaven! And so often, it's easy to doubt and sin and push any thoughts of the Judgement Day out of my mind. But that's when I need to confess and remember that God won't see my sin; He'll see Christ's righteousness in me, and I should not fear. Seeing this post confirms my suspicion that God is telling me to excitedly anticipate His Coming and to be prepared.
ReplyDelete~Esther
Yay! So glad to "confirm suspicions"! =)
DeleteRachel I like the theme of this post, I'll just quibble with one small thing. :)
ReplyDeleteYou said "...without our flesh to harden the task and weigh us down.."
The thing is that this statement implies that the Gnostic heretics were right in stating that matter is bad. If God created all matter, then matter is good, and our bodies are matter created by God, therefore good. This issue is crucial to our understanding of death and Resurrection. If our body is not baggage weighing us down, but an inextricable part of who we are, then our final hope is not Heaven, but rather the Resurrection. My point is, that while it's great that death is conquered, it's not because it's a blessing freeing us from our bodies to be with Jesus, but because our bodies, a crucial part of our being, will be resurrected and death will have no more power over us. Do I make sense?
I'm trying to argue what Augustine and Thomas Aquinas taught, that death is the unnatural ripping of soul from body. That in death, "you" cease to exist, yeah your soul lives on in Heaven, but that's not the real you, the real you is body and soul, and so as Christians our final hope, the real end of the race, is not our souls floating around strumming harps, though that will be cool, but the resurrection and reuniting of our body and soul.
And I've probably completely misunderstood you and made a big deal out of a badly phrased sentence, haven't I. :)
By "flesh" I meant everything fallen about human nature. "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." I indeed do not think that earthly things are bad, merely not as they should be. We have many good gifts from God, and they are just that– good. However, there are many verses in the Bible referring to the "lusts of the flesh", and even Paul cried out against his fleshly nature. As Esther said above, God has given us so much– how much better will heaven (and the resurrection) be?!
ReplyDeleteSo I think I phrased it how I meant it. Not "flesh is of itself bad", but "flesh(as far as it relates to evil desires, etc) is hard to deal with".
As long as we're referring evil desires, and not the actual body, I'll be happy. :)
DeleteRachel, this is so beautiful, thank you for sharing your heart. I teared up at the end. You used God's word so powerfully, and used personal experiences to show that it's true. That is my hope: that when Jesus comes back, I will no longer be weighted down by this imperfect body given to sin, this "tent" as Paul put it, but Jesus will give me a new, perfect body, in which I will glorify God and enjoy Him forever--and never sin again! Keep seeking God, and keep writing!
ReplyDelete