Tuesday’s mean dialysis, followed by eating and sleeping. And never feeling good.
I hadn’t been up in the middle of the night – for a change, so it was afternoon when I ‘opened’ my Bible (online at BibleGateway.com) and searched on verses about “waking up.”
I felt guilty about resting so much.
Honestly, in my mind, I was expecting Psalms and Proverbs (“How long will you lie down, O sluggard?”) to be tops in the results, but they weren’t.
Instead, I found myself in 1 Corinthians 15, in which the writer talks about death. A lot. (The connection to my search being “waking up from the sleep of the dead”).
I ended up reading the whole chapter and wondering what I really believed. I questioned how I am To Know What To Believe.
:50 ERV
I tell you this, … : Our bodies of flesh and blood cannot have a part in God’s kingdom. Something that will ruin can not have a part in something that never ruins.
Question: how can we know exactly what will happen when we die? Answer: we can’t, truly. Frankly, it’s all speculation and hearsay.
Now, I’m sad.
Paul presents a logical argument (literally, Ellicott’s commentary lists all the devices, like reductio ad absurdum and argumentum ad hominem) for our ultimate resurrection.
But we have no proof. We don’t know. We can only believe.
And one verse hit me very hard:
:19 If our hope in Christ is only for this life here on earth, than people should feel more sorry for us than for anyone else.
How can I be sure about the (or any) afterlife? I can’t, and it was bumming me out.
But in reading the whole chapter I found something to hold on to: the evidence of my own experience.
I know what has happened in my life. And therein lies my hope. That got me feeling better.
I know I’ve been created, so there must be a Creator. I know I’ve been saved (from what I was), so there must be a Savior. I know all my life there’s been guidance (that voice inside), so I know there is a guiding Spirit.
And the whole of it is a metamorphosis: conception to birth, child to adult, broken to redeemed. Seed to plant (verse 36). Caterpillar to butterfly.
:51 We will not all die, but we will all be changed… as quickly as an eye blinks.
“I’m going to find out the grand secret.” Lt Hancock in Breaker Morant
Creator,
I know I will die; I will cease to live in this form. But in nature, your creation, you display metamorphoses of all kinds. Therefore I can view death not as the end but as The Great Change, actually just one among many that you have brought me through.
:26 The last enemy to be destroyed will be death.