Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Devotion - Wednesday, April 7

In I Corinthians 15:35-41 Paul responds to the question we all want answered. “But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised?’”

We speak of the resurrection, we pray for the resurrection, we hope in the resurrection, but how does it actually happen?

The development of biological sciences has only made this more difficult. Among us there are students and scholars whose work is in the field of reanimation. They could share with us the difficulty of bring back to life that which is dead. I seem to remember a movie, a few years back, which took as its title 29 Grams, supposedly the precise weight which is lost (unexplainably lost) when someone dies. “Is that the weight of the soul, as it leaves the body?” the movie asks.

Paul addresses the question, head on, in I Corinthians 15. Unfortunately, the answer he gives fails to satisfy those who want to know exactly what happens when we die.

He writes, “You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.”

In short, we don’t know; and we can’t know.

It seems to be a matter of trust – we are called upon to trust that whatever kind of body God gives us, it will be just fine. We are to trust that whatever the resurrection is like, it will be glorious. We are to trust that whatever form we take, it will be appropriate.

After all, the resurrection comes to those who live their lives trusting in God, right? Resurrection is the promise extended to those who have placed their own private interest in a secondary role to the hopes and promises of God. Resurrection happens when we stop thinking about ourselves and begin to live for the one who gives life to all things.

Paul chides his readers. He reminds them that their attention need not be on their own form, but on the form of praise they (and this new body) can offer to God.

I wish I knew. It would be helpful and comforting to know. But it is enough to remember that God has been good and gracious to me in this life, so I will find the strength to trust that whatever God has in store for me for all eternity can only be good and gracious, too.

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