September 24, 2012
Occupied
Last week the organizing of a church member’s funeral had some
scheduling conflicts, so the decision was made to set up the family viewing
area at the church. The night before the service the open casket was put in
place and the flowers arranged. There was only one minor detail that was
overlooked…no one remembered to tell the early morning cleaning crew that the
deceased was in residence. I can only imagine that these two ladies were as
shocked to find the occupied casket as the two Marys were to find an empty
tomb. “The angel said to the women, “Do
not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the
place where he lay.” (Matt 28:5-6 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----The supposed shock of your church’s two cleaning ladies and the shock of the two Mary’s reveals how stubborn of mind we truly are. The Lord began telling His disciples weeks before the Passover that He would be put to death and that He would rise again. Sometimes His words were not that straight forward, sometimes they were. But always, He was giving them an obvious message so they might be prepared to next go in the right direction. Maybe the two cleaning ladies were a bit more justified in their being surprised. Although funeral services often involve a viewing, they are not always supplied with corpus for the event the night before. Yet, that is more to be anticipated for a funeral than finding the corpus no longer where you placed it.
-----It is well theorized and tested that a certain function of the sub-conscious limits concepts to protect the self’s perceptions and identity from profound and ambiguous changes. I once heard a medical piece on the radio regarding an area of the brain that regulated mental activity by filtering out everything beyond an acceptable degree of difference from the individual’s upper limit of normal experience. The two cleaning ladies, the two Mary’s, the Lord’s slow to believe disciples, and all the rest of us then have at least a weak explanation for our dim eyesight and dull hearing. But no good excuse.
-----Especially us. We have the Word of God in its completed form. Many of us have grown up with it. In it many events are told of men and women experiencing things far outside the norm of ordinary life, things as simple as a precious lady made from a rib, to a rock in the desert watering a million, to rocks, Temple steps, and the veil of the Most Holy Place splitting as the Lord died. Frank Turek reminds us that we daily walk upon the most amazing miracle of God’s calling the heavens and the earth into existence at a mere command. The more we dwell upon these things as the Word presents them, the more acceptable God’s involvement in world affairs becomes to our inner guardians of our perceptions.
-----Then of course, I’m sure David Koresh dwelt upon such thoughts, as did maybe Joseph Smith, Ellen G. White, Charles Taize Russell, and many others of their likes. The mere capacity to experience by proxy the real workings of God beyond the normal is not all that is required for the workings of our own hands to be of His nature. Desiring truth is an awareness as powerfully directional as is desiring one’s own way. Discerning the difference between the two is the key. And when our desires do key into the truth, nothing God does seems completely surprising. Just Glorious.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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