Sometimes Life is Like This

Job in Agony

by Leon Bonnat

Why then did you bring me out from the womb?
     I should have died and no eye would have seen me!
          I should have been as though I had never existed;
               I should have been carried right from the womb to the grave!
Are not my days few?
     Cease, then, and leave me alone,
that I may find a little comfort,
before I depart,
     never to return,
          to the land of darkness and the deepest shadow,
               to the land of utter darkness,
               like the deepest darkness,
and the deepest shadow and disorder
     where even the light is darkness.

Book of Job 10.18-25

'Memento Mori'

For more about the Christian teaching on life and death (the real teaching, the one we started out with and actually still teach without most people noticing) visit our page on 'LIFE.'

memento mori

Photo courtesy of Leo Reynolds

Sorry to bring this up on a nice, relaxing weekend. I know you'd probably rather not hear it, uncomfortable subject that it is. But death, after all, is an integral part of Jesus' teachings. He spoke on it and its ramifications at length. As they used to say during the Middle Ages, "memento mori" -- "Remember, you too must die." So for your Sunday meditations I present one of the great teachers of the Christian Movement, followed by several scriptures to back her up.

_______________

Remember you have but one soul; you will die but once; you have only one life, which is short, and which you must live on your own account; there is only one heaven, which lasts forever—this will make you indifferent to many things.

Teresa of Ávila  (AD 1515 - 1582)
Minor Works of St. Teresa, p. 198


As for me, my days are sprinting by like a runner. Seeing nothing good, they seek escape... Humankind, born of woman, has a few brief years with much suffering.

Book of Job 9.25 and 14.1, Voice


You have determined the length of my days, and my life is nothing compared to You. Even the longest life is only a breath.”

Book of Psalms 39.5, Voice


A voice says, “Declare!” But what shall I declare? All life is like the grass. All of its grace and beauty fades like the wild flowers in a field. The grass withers, the flower fades as the breath of the Eternal One blows away. People are no different from grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; nothing lasts except the word of our God. It will stand forever.

Book of Isaiah the Prophet 40.6-8, Voice

Life After Death, Part 1

Read more in Part 1a>>

What happens to us when we die? Do we lie there moldering in our graves? Do we head off to Heaven to live a disembodied eternity with God? Are we conscious or do we "soul sleep" until the resurrection?

As the Apostle Paul said in the scripture I posted Sunday (1st Letter to the Corinthians chapter 15 verses 22 - 24), whatever it is that happens to us, it will be the same thing that happened to Jesus when he died. Followers of Jesus live "in Christ," bonded together with him. Like him we will die and be resurrected; only the timing is different. As the Messiah, he went first, and we will all follow him by being bodily resurrected when it's our turn -- "when Christ comes again."

Jesus' younger brother once wrote, "A person’s body that does not have a spirit is dead." Christ's body, we know, died and was buried in a tomb for 3 days, but what about his spirit? Where was the spirit of the Son of God during what the Christian Movement has long called "Holy Saturday" -- the time between his burial and resurrection?

Wherever it was, or whatever condition Jesus' spirit existed in, our spirits will experience the same thing between our deaths and resurrections -- with one important caveat: the universe was altered on a cosmic scale with the death and resurrection of the Messiah. That was sort of the point, after all: "The Son of God came for this: to destroy the devil’s work," (1st Letter of John chapter 3 verse 8, ERV). So conditions may have changed even in the world of the dead since those epic 3 days, but the overall situation of those who will be resurrected remains.

 It's never been our main topic of conversation (that, of course, would be the announcement of the arrival of the Lord Messiah and his Kingdom) and we never fleshed it out as much as you and I might like, but the early Christian Movement was aware of where Jesus was, and where we go, between death and resurrection.

So this will begin a series of posts on the after life. The scholar N.T. Wright famously calls being resurrected "life after life after death," something Jesus and his Apostles were much more interested in. But we won't go quite that far for now. We'll be looking at what they taught about what comes before that: "Life After Death."

Read more in Part 1a>>

Holy Saturday: "...You will not leave me..."

The Watch Over the Tomb

by James Tissot

I always remember that the LORD
     is with me. 

He is here, close by my side, 
     so nothing can defeat me. 

So my heart and soul will be 

     very happy.

Even my body will live in safety,
because you will not leave me 

     in the place of death. 

You will not let your faithful one 

     rot in the grave. 

You will teach me the right way to live. 

Just being with you will bring 

     complete happiness. 

Being at your right side will make me 

happy forever. 

(Psalms chapter 16 verses 8 - 11, ERV)