Romans 8:1-11
They say that the only two things you can count on in life are death and taxes. A discussion of taxes might turn out to be too contentious. Let's speak of life! I wonder if a caterpiller speaks of death when it forms a coccon? Does it know it will emerge as a butterfly? It would be fascinating to know if the caterpiller has any consciousness of life as a caterpiller and then after it emerges into what the life is as a butterfly. The two seem very disparate. Sluggish, wormlike, drab to flittering beauty of the sky, like floating stained glass. It certainly could conjur up images of what our lives are like.
As much as I love to gaze on the human form it could be considered somehwhat drab. We are assured of eternal life, could it be like that of a butterfly? Formless spirits floating? An essence of our former being so gentle and light? I am wise enough to realize that in God's created world there are visions of what we are and what we are meant to be. God leaves clues everywhere if we have eyes to see.
It is no foreign or odd thought that we will live on.We already know the intensity of the memories of those we love and that have departed thier earthly shells. Our hearts and minds are full of people who have graced our lives and whose love lives on in us.
It is not so much that I wonder what life in the hereafter will be like, it is more that I am sure that it exists. This reading asures us of that. While I am not sure it is limited to followers of our Lord, I know this life we live now can be considered somewhat of a coccoon.
This essay of sorts is necessary for me today on this Holy Saturday. A day of limbo when our Lord has died and was laid in the tomb. I am well aware of the feelings of loss. Friends who have died, parents, holy people whom I have loved and been graced to be a vistor in their lives. It must have been crushing for Mary, for the Apostles, for all the beleivers. Such finality it seemed. So he wasn't the Messiah. He didn't come as a warrior to redeem Israel. It was all for naught. This is the agony we all go through. We need to remember. Really, simply remember. We recall the life. We know the love. It lives on in us. They live on in a state we are not familiar with but one that exists none the less.
They say that the only two things you can count on in life are death and taxes. A discussion of taxes might turn out to be too contentious. Let's speak of life! I wonder if a caterpiller speaks of death when it forms a coccon? Does it know it will emerge as a butterfly? It would be fascinating to know if the caterpiller has any consciousness of life as a caterpiller and then after it emerges into what the life is as a butterfly. The two seem very disparate. Sluggish, wormlike, drab to flittering beauty of the sky, like floating stained glass. It certainly could conjur up images of what our lives are like.
As much as I love to gaze on the human form it could be considered somehwhat drab. We are assured of eternal life, could it be like that of a butterfly? Formless spirits floating? An essence of our former being so gentle and light? I am wise enough to realize that in God's created world there are visions of what we are and what we are meant to be. God leaves clues everywhere if we have eyes to see.
It is no foreign or odd thought that we will live on.We already know the intensity of the memories of those we love and that have departed thier earthly shells. Our hearts and minds are full of people who have graced our lives and whose love lives on in us.
It is not so much that I wonder what life in the hereafter will be like, it is more that I am sure that it exists. This reading asures us of that. While I am not sure it is limited to followers of our Lord, I know this life we live now can be considered somewhat of a coccoon.
This essay of sorts is necessary for me today on this Holy Saturday. A day of limbo when our Lord has died and was laid in the tomb. I am well aware of the feelings of loss. Friends who have died, parents, holy people whom I have loved and been graced to be a vistor in their lives. It must have been crushing for Mary, for the Apostles, for all the beleivers. Such finality it seemed. So he wasn't the Messiah. He didn't come as a warrior to redeem Israel. It was all for naught. This is the agony we all go through. We need to remember. Really, simply remember. We recall the life. We know the love. It lives on in us. They live on in a state we are not familiar with but one that exists none the less.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
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