God is in the Business of Raising People from the Dead
This week I discovered one of my relatives has three of his arteries blocked. Open heart surgery is always a risky affair. But at 70 years old, an open-heart surgery might be the last experience of our lives. The Christians in the household have responded by raising a banner of prayer and we are putting our trust in the goodness and love of God, our Father who knows my relative by name and loves him as His own.
“I don’t want to die”
This news has also triggered a reflection for me. Life-threatening events trigger a deep response within all of us - I don’t want to die. No matter how bad things are; no matter how depressing our lives might be; no matter how much we might have disliked our existence from before… near death experiences produce a primal cry - I don’t want to die. It’s one of the reasons why there’s hope even for people attempting suicide. There is a huge chasm between the thought of suicide and the actual attempt. When we come face to face with death - our auto immune response is triggered - I don’t want to die.
But what are we really living for?
We know we don’t want to die. But do we know why we want to live? This is the fundamental problem with our human experience. We know we don’t want to die, but if we are asked… why live? What are we living for? We would have some problems answering this question.
We pray for God to heal us. Save us. Help us. We ask God to get us out of the grip of death. But when he does, we go back to work for survival - which we complain about. We go back to the life so stressful that we have to take medication. We go back to the kind of life where we binge on Netflix dramas or gaming consoles, drifting from one level unlock to another with no real direction or destination. Or we live life chasing - one dream, and another and another… and we are never satisfied or content.
Not many of us possess a clear and consistent answer to the question of why we bother getting up every morning. Why do we study? Why do we work? Why do we eat and drink and clothe and entertain ourselves? We seek to get married, and then we want out; we yearn for children, and then we are too busy for them; we love our family, but too much time with them and we suffer.
We all need to be raised to Life
We are living… but in a state that can hardly be called Life. And this is exactly why God is in the business of raising us to Life. This is precisely why we need God to raise us up to Life. Paul puts it clearly…
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” (Ephesians 2:1–6 ESV)
To live, is to be raised by God with Christ. There is no other vision of Life outside of this. It’s a vision of Life worth talking about. It’s a vision of Life worth meditating on. It’s a vision of Life worth deepening our comprehension of.
To believe in Jesus is to come into possession of Life. Nothing more and nothing less. May this Gospel pervade your existence and permeate all the moments of our lives.