December 02, 2009
Do Not Resuscitate
I picture Dorcas as a faithful servant, albeit older, tired and weary. Not only was she was always doing good and helping the poor, but she took great care with the widows in her community making them clothes and robes. One day Dorcas became sick and died. I find it interesting that it wasn’t until after her body was prepared for viewing (washed and placed in an upstairs room) that someone got the idea to send for Peter and urge him to “Please come at once!” When Peter arrived he sent everyone out of the room, got down on his knees and prayed. Telling Dorcas to “Get Up”, she opened her eyes, sat up and Peter then presented her back to her friends alive. Because Dorcas was brought back to life many people believed in the Lord. This is a good thing, but I can’t help but wonder if Dorcas herself wanted to come back. Do you think she might have had a DO NOT RESUSCITATE order on file? (Acts 9:36)
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Gail;
-----Death must be an interesting predicament. I don’t think I can say much more than that about it, because I don’t think I have really been there. I have been close enough to it a couple times to have experienced my precursory thoughts and feelings about it, but that still is not actually being there. My curiosity drives me to wish I could share an afternoon with Dorcas, or especially Lazarus. I would have multitudes of questions to ask about their experiences while they were dead, and I would hang on every word of their answers.
-----My most important question would be, “Were you really that dead? I mean, is there some holding condition for the spirit between life and death for you special people who have been raised from the dead? A condition that is maybe not completely death for the spirit, although the body is truly dead? Because the Word tells us that it is appointed for man to die once (Heb 9:27), but now you have to die a second time.” I have my speculations about this, but they have the experience.
-----Or maybe I have more experience with it than I think. God told Adam that he would die in the day he ate of the forbidden tree. And he did die that day. We have all been dead ever since. Even though we have been physically alive, we have been spiritually dead. We can not actually see or hear God and His angels, or anyone else who is physically dead. That entire spiritual dimension is removed from our sensory abilities. How big is it? Having myriads of myriads of angels, it is evidently vast. How perfect? Without so much as a smidgen of error. How alive? Every angel having a name and a task, every action having a benefit and no detriment, and even the brightness of its light making our Sun dark in comparison - it must be quite alive! And here we are stuck to this tiny dirt ball like mud clods to a dry lake bed! We can not even see beyond a few dozen miles unless we gaze into the stars, and then we simply notice how minuscule this dusty little trap really is. We are dead.
-----Or at least those who have issued “Do not resuscitate” orders are dead. But those of us who have chosen to know the Lord have chosen to do our “once to die” thing while we yet had physical life, and have had our spirits resuscitated back to actual life. Though we are still tied by these physical bodies to this dirt ball, we now know all of it to be death. And although our eyeballs can only see the things of the dirt ball, we have been given spiritual eyes through which we can dimly see the things of the real life, and living hearts by which we grasp those things tightly with desire. For I was dead, but now I am alive! I think I must do more sharing of my experiences with those who have not yet revoked their “Do not resuscitate” orders.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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