July 02, 2012
Flash
I found our communion meditation a couple of weeks ago very thought
provoking and comforting. The speaker contemplated death and suggested that
when our loved ones die in Christ, they’re really not dead. They have simply,
in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, gone from life to life – from physical
life to eternal life. I like that image. It sure beats the reports from some people
on their out of body experiences of walking down a dark tunnel towards a light.
(1Cor 15:52)
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Gail;
-----Out of body and near death experiences are interesting. Not so much the walks down the tunnels and the meetings of loved ones in great lights. Who knows completely what that phenomenon is. I tend to accept the analysis of many psychologists and other medical types who say these are merely the productions of mental activity shutting down. But reliable reports of experiences beyond the functional capabilities of the body are fascinating. ABC News reported one such incident a couple years ago of a woman who had been controlled into the state of clinical death to facilitate the removal of a cancer tumor from her inner brain. When she was revived the doctors were stunned at more than the success of the highly risky procedure. She began talking about conversations going on in the operating room while she was in a state of clinical death. She was able to describe much of the activity going on during the surgery. She said she was there and watching. The Bible warns against playing with spirit stuff, probably because spirit stuff is real.
-----It also comforts us regarding spirit stuff absolutely because spirit stuff is real. I like to say that we are a biological machine strapped to a spirit. Our bodies will stop working. But there is no concept in reality for our spirits to stop existing. They won’t stop. However, that isn’t to say human spirits are alive just because they are spirits. Because we think of the spirit world as ethereal we often make the mistake of thinking it is simplistic, too. I’ve never been there, and I’ve never had a conversation with anyone who has, but from the sense of many statements, phrases, and expressions in the Bible, I surely believe its complexity is amazing. Death to the spirit is not non-existence like we perceive physical death to be a passing away. Death to the spirit is indelible separation from God.
-----I think it very comforting to know that simply desiring the truth about things and coming to know it by God through Christ makes the spirit alive by reconnection to God in the Holy Spirit. To think that my spirit strapped to this frail biological machine has been perfected so that it can reside in the actual presence of the Holy Spirit is the most important bit of information to my sense of well being. Whether the spirit goes somewhere when I die, or just hovers around my decaying body, or crawls into bed somewhere and goes to sleep, I don’t really care. Whatever it will do it will do in the presence of God and the proximity of Jesus. Those are Scriptural promises.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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