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.