Skip to main content

Death to Life

It’s good Friday. 
The words of Bonhoeffer ruminate in my head and the world around me vacillates between winter and spring.
The day, the words, the surroundings speak of death.

Those trailing flowers I pass by every day on my way to work have moved from tiny buds to full-fledged blooms and I’m reminded that death always brings about life.

The words of a wise man, spoken years ago in a time of vision seeming to die, ring in my head again:
“In order for something new to come, something has to die.”

It speaks a hope over the death of dreams and a season that has made me aware of just how failing my flesh is. 

The thoughts leave as quickly as they enter and I go about my day.


I find myself skimming the newspaper handed to me by the man changing my oil.  My eyes are drawn to a section on chronic pain and I read about a newer perspective of doctors regarding this issue: the focus has shifted from attempting to take away all pain, to trying to reduce it.

I’m intrigued as I read these words.  And I’m struck by just how often my desire is for Jesus to take away all my issues, or at least for Him to allow me the luxury of working through them as quickly as possible.

I read on.

The words I read stop me short:
“‘Quality does not mean the elimination of death’” (Healy & Kaplan, 2016).

It seems so upside-down, all of this.  My fleshly self screams out against the fight and struggle, against the death of self and the wasting away of my body.

But in this very rearranged worldview our Savior came.
The Messiah who was expected to be a mighty warrior king, who would achieve victory through his influence and power, stepped down into flesh in order to die.

My resistance to believing that death is the path to greater life brings me right alongside the people of His time that rejected Him as Messiah because He did not fit their expected idea.



I’m amazed by the heart of the Gospel being displayed in the medical world, without them even knowing:
“’When doctors listen to and communicate with patients, show compassion and skill, and coordinate with other physicians to address patients’ needs, suffering is reduced-even if they still have pain’” (Healy and Kaplan, 2016).

Stepping into another’s world in order to show them that they’re not alone.

 “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us…” (Jn. 1:14, NASB)
God becoming man, the greatest expression of the fact that He is with us.

And His death draws us into deeper relationship, both with Him and others.
His death fulfilled the just requirement of God for a perfect sacrifice to be given on behalf of our rebellion and brought about the possibility for relationship with God.
His death entered our experience and shows us that He understands our finite situation, so full of learning to die to ourselves and the awareness of our fleeting lives.
His death allows us to follow His lead and step into the the lives of others in their suffering and show them that they’re not alone.


What a different perspective this brings to pain and death.
Rather than seeing it as something to trek through as quickly as possible, something for which to ask for deliverance, it can be seen as something which Jesus is using to bring about greater life.

It is the process of killing the parts of us that our divided from Him, in order to form new ways that draw us deeper into Him.
Physically, it reminds us that we are temporary and that our eyes should be on the eternal.
It brings about the ability to empathize with others in their suffering and be with them in their pain.
And, most greatly, it turns our eyes to our Savior and draws us into deeper desire for Him because He became one of us, with the full intent that it would lead to death, knowing that this would bring about the greatest life.

So, may I agree with the words of Paul, as he writes to the people of Corinth:
“We always carry about in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body” (2 Cor 4:10, NIV).

I’m thankful for this upside-down way which brings life out of death.
Sunday is proof:
He is risen.




Source:

Healy, Melissa and Kaplan, Karen.  (2016, March 25).  Zero Pain?  The Oregonian, p. C2.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Expressions

I find myself drawn more and more to the expression. There’s something so moving about taking in the communication of someone else’s experience or in expressing your own. Words.  Pictures.  Stories.  Paintings.  Music.  Beauty. What else can we expect as creations of a undeniably communicative God? The one who penned His words for us, made unending images of creativity, wrote a story that spans all time, made the entire universe His canvas, is continually praised with song, and in whom are culminated all things beautiful.  And so we live forth His image and express here on this earth. The more you interact with these expressions, though, the more you begin to see that what really moves is not the penned letters or the captured images or the compiled sounds, but the heart of the communicator.   It’s in the expression of their experience that you begin to share their joy, to feel their pain, to enter into their journey.  It’s why we’re so drawn to creative expression

The Grace of Discipleship

What is discipleship? It seems that is the question of the day.  We’re called to make disciples and yet we hardly see it happening.  And when it comes down to it, we don’t even know what it looks like, so how can we know if it’s happening? The word discipleship for me usually brings images to mind of meeting one-on-one with someone, teaching them from scripture, talking about what God is doing in their hearts.  I think this is what it can look like to make disciples, but I think to truly understand discipleship the tables must be turned so that we find ourselves sitting face to face with Jesus.  Rather than focus on the outer act, he turns our eyes to the inner state. In Matthew 16:24, Jesus tells His disciples that “if anyone wishes to come after [Him] they must deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow [Him].”  Tough orders from the God of the universe. I think I cringe a little every time I hear those words.   Could it be this life of a disciple that often sou

Busyness and Leaves

I’m sitting in the inactivity, trying to let His presence be enough. And I’m made aware of just how hard that is for me. I’m feeling the great freedom it brings to just sit and not need to be doing for or saying to Him.  And yet I’m feeling my need to be doing something. People pass me by and I wonder what they’re thinking of me, if they’re wondering what I’m doing.  I position myself over my journal, in hopes they’ll think that I’m writing or working on something.  To let them think I’m sitting and doing nothing would let them wonder if perhaps I’m not ok. And I let that worry determine my actions. I’ve wondered just recently how I seem to inevitably end up giving an impression of being busy.  But as I wonder, I ponder the even more important question: what if I’m not as busy as people think?  Am I willing to let them see me as someone who doesn’t have a lot on their plate? Often, I find the answer is no. Busyness brings with it an ability to control.  It allows a