The One About Death

I've been thinking a lot about death lately.

{If you don't know me, I have a creepy streak.}

Not in an emo-high-school-psuedo-depressed/sucidal/intro-to-a-Tim-Burton-movie kind of way. To clarify, don't worry about me.

More it's finality. The totality.

No one's exempt; we live this life, this sometimes painful, sometimes tragic, yet hopefully beautiful life, and then... it's over. A conclusion so dark, eternal... inevitable, an indiscriminate reaper collecting bones in the night.

The people I know, our church, humanity - we're dealing with it.

I lost someone I knew last month, and if I believe what I say I believe, I think I know where they are. She wasn't even a family member or friend... an acquaintance, merely a passing soul that God brought in for a time and then ushered right back out. I didn't even get a real glimpse of her - our time together like walking past a dirty window, looking in and seeing only distorted outlines. That's how little, that's how short. And it's killing me. What could I have done differently? What if I was the only connection to Him she ever had? The only seed planter? And I messed it up, because I was too busy. Too self-involved, too numb to her need.

How often am I {are you} walking in a crowd, hands stuffed in pockets, head down, walking briskly, bent on reaching a destination and nothing else. While other lost hearts, wholly unique and crafted by God, pass by. It makes me sick. What am I living for, if not to interrupt their life with Life?

Is this not a tool of Satan? To get His church, already largely undefined, apathetic and dwindling, closed off to others? The very ones we are sent out for?

{Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations... Matthew 28:19}

The action word here is GO. Get up. Move. DO something.

I love what Christine Caine says too - 

Jesus rescued us and set us free so that we, in turn, would reach back and set others free (para). 

This is all that matters! {People. Hearts. Lost souls.} As a friend, grappling with death and grief himself, so poignantly said yesterday - this is serious. Lives are at stake. {What are we doing!}

See, when Satan convinces us to shove our hands in our pockets, to keep our heads down, to keep walking, to keep quiet... it gets harder and harder to look up.

Last semester, I made the same drive to school 5 days a week. It's a long stretch driving Wilson from Loveland up to FC, with next to nothing noteworthy about the drive. One morning, one gloomy yellow-grassed, cloudless morning (like most others) for no particular reason, I looked up.

Here's what I saw:

A row of power lines shaped like crosses.

Simple, stupid power-lines that were there every moment of every day of that mundane drive, but it took the action of God lifting my head to notice them. It's the perfect reminder.

Jesus is here, in every moment of every day of our mundane lives. He is the power-line, what He did for us on the cross is eternal, more final than death. Jesus defeated the grave, and He wants us to raise our heads! To stop living like the walking dead. Jesus says 'look up' when the world will only serve to grind us downward... when we start believing lies and need Truth. He says 'look up' when Satan says I want your head here. 'Look up' into the faces of My people! I love them! I want them! What I've given you? It's time to move it outwards.

This is one of my favorite music videos lately, and I think it's more meaningful than I initially thought. My interpretation is that the guy is a criminal investigator type, who after witnessing so much 'death' in his work, finally succumbs to it himself. It creatively shows how death is inescapable, creepy, and unnatural with an additional spiritual peppering I see: that living without it being for God - is like walking through life like you're already dead.

It's a sobering visual reminder, if nothing else. *if you're easily creeped out/disturbed, I'd skip this one.

The rhythm of life - is death.

Physical death is something only One has conquered... but, we can escape {and help others escape} spiritual death through Him.

"The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy; I {Jesus} have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."

John 10:10 NIV