December 19, 2011
Intersection
Today I’m attending the funeral service for a friend I’ve known for
almost 38 years. Our relationship has been something similar to the traffic
pattern of city streets. We haven’t always been on the same street, but over the
years our paths have often intersected and when they did we would pick up our
conversation where we left off. I’ve always thought of the holidays as being a
bad time for someone’s death because it would somehow mar the season for years
to come. But I’ve changed my mind with Mary’s passing. I’ve now been given the
opportunity to unwrap the gift of memories that she has left for me and I’m
having a Mary’s Christmas.
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Gail;
-----Sometimes I wonder if the unfamiliar bothers people more than death. Since earth’s beginning, everything has died. The most certain thing about life is death, so it should be the most expected thing as well. By now, you think we would be adjusted to it. I think if we were merely biological machines, like evolution would have us to be, we would certainly be adjusted to it. Of course nobody wants to reach “game over”, but if the game were all there is, over would be easy to understand. Atheists say that the organism’s struggle to survive translates into some kind of expectation of a life after death. Although elephants, great apes, dolphins, and many other species show signs of grieving their dead, and every species does not accept “game over” without fight or flight, none of them have shown any signs of erecting temples, shrines, altars of sacrifice, or sanctuaries for worship. They just surrender to lights out while the rest of them move on after maybe a brief moment of pause.
-----But us humans seem to be quite different. Atheists say it is because of our more highly developed brains while they try to tout the dolphins and whales and sometimes some other critter-de-jour as the smartest amongst animals. But if we were so durn smart and had arisen from some extinct slime-hole within nothing more significant than the happenstances of immeasurable chemical reactions of the ever bubbling universe, then happenstance would be the basic frame of the human mind and game over would be the unquestionably observed last stance to happen for everything having once lived. Absurdity would color any thought about anything being after game over.
-----God visited the garden after He had placed Adam there. They talked to each other. But after Adam sinned, he could no longer willingly converse with God. Abraham, Moses, Daniel, Mary, Joseph, Paul, John, and many others in one way or another experienced contact with either the Lord or His angels. Some scientists think they have found the brain’s god spot, which makes humans think there is a god. I will wait for their isolating of it’s particular gene before I buy into the brain’s being hardwired for His contact. I think man’s propensity to perceive a god and life after death comes from the incredibly systemic nature the brain’s immeasurable activity crosses paths with the spirit inside us joining with the stories heard of God’s actual contact with man. In other words, we perceive its real because we can perceive and it is real.
-----And that gives us great pause to consider all the messages that death is really not game over. From the soul’s witness of the spirit within to the testimony of many who’ve conversed with what’s in control of anything after death, the word is beware, yet any details are almost non-existent. The human mind which must process experiences into conclusions able to comfort witnesses death copiously, yet knows nothing first-hand of what‘s “over there“ for processing it. So we must entirely trust what we’re told. The best evidenced teller of spirituality, Jesus Christ, tells us not to fret a lick about death if we hear Him, because what’s over there is unimaginably greater than what’s here. So our comfort regarding death is not really about death. It is really about distinguishing His voice from all the background noise and experiencing it. Then death becomes just another crossing we’re told we’ll make.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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