January 14, 2015
Deathbed
Some people in my family are
having a hard time coming to grips with words like terminal, hospice, and end
of life. It’s as though the first person to utter those words has not only
given up hope, but they might also dash the hope of others. In a similar manner
believers hesitate to speak about those who are spiritually dying right before
our eyes because we don’t want to be labeled judgmental, or appear to have lost
hope for another’s salvation. The reality is that there are observable signs
for both physical and spiritual death. “The truly righteous man attains life, but
he who pursues evil goes to his death” (Proverbs 11:19 NIV).
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Gail;
-----Everywhere you turn there seems to be another zombie movie or TV series. I don’t know if zombies run around trying to eat the living or just wanting to kill them. And they drip with death, confusion, and chaos. I don’t watch these shows. Every one of them is just the same as the first one I saw. So I don’t know if the poor living folks holed up in their basements are ever successful in eliminating the zombies.
-----Without Christ in his life, even the healthiest of us is yet a zombie. Our perception of physical death being death is so ingrained that spiritual death seems just a notion. But truly, physical death is the notion, and spiritual death is the condition. Physical death is simply the veil of the body dropping away from the spirit which then suddenly sees the rest of what is.
-----And that’s the key - separation. Physical death illustrates spiritual death. For spiritual death is just a separation from God. Of course, that’s a mighty big just. For in God is the meaning, purpose, and interrelationship of all things. In Him is the unity everything shares to not simply co-exist (as the zombies are wont to promote) but to actively benefit everything in mutual construction of only rightness, goodness, and propriety as the very purpose of existence. Into infinity for eternity the construction and enjoyment of good continues for everything interconnected through Christ with the Father. It isn‘t food, water, clothing, and shelter that keeps us alive. They just keep our spirits housed in our bodies. It is abiding in Christ that makes us not zombies, that makes us alive as the Bible better expresses it.
-----We enjoy as much of that real life as we are willing to peel back the aspects of our physical natures so that our spiritual realities can engage this life. To live the new life here, training up and allowing its character traits to form and become our habits and attitudes and feelings and mental constructs pushes the parts of our character traits disconnected with God out the front door where anyone present can see them as having been rejected.
-----It is the only way to fight off the zombies. Your first battle is to fight the zombie out of yourself. The next battle is to inspire your neighbors to fight the zombie out of themselves. And I don’t know how zombie movies end, but this real movie ends seemingly like the zombies win. For the script as written has them overwhelming the world with their chaotic,presence, destroying and consuming everything until at the very last moment, when it seems they are about to break into the last basement of Jerusalem, the One who pushes zombie out of us who call on Him rides to the rescue, ridding the earth of every soul who refused to obey His simple truths.
-----It is hard to be truthful with people grief or fear stricken by physical death. But keeping in mind that real death is more than the separation of body and spirit might help clarify what can be said about the super abundance of life awaiting the spirit leaving the body. And living until then with such awareness in mind even seems to drag some of that abundant life into this place.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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