Get Back Up Again

The resurrection and the life: Christians recognize this expression from Jesus' many I AM descriptions in bible. As we come to grips with our own mortality, the whole idea of being raised again gives us much hope, even though we have very little understanding of what forever means.

But as we grow in Christ, it becomes clearer that life means resurrection and vice versa. Creation seems to operate along a death-to-life continuum that frustrates us at times, but gives glory to God in His sovereignty. As life's seasons change, God uses regeneration and newness as a necessary stage for things that we would consider only to be headed for certain death.

Jesus said: "unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." He stated further: "The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." Hating our lives in this world means trusting that God knows best what to do with the raw ingredients of our being, including the parts that otherwise would keep us from producing "many seeds."

In our own lives, whatever we hold dearest often seems the most difficult to keep alive. Loved ones, institutions, societies, ways of thinking, and sometimes even our own reputations all seem to be vulnerable to history's ash heap. Try as we may, we alone are unable to preserve them from the destructive elements that surround us.

Personal crises can seem to be the worst. As Christians in a success-driven culture, we often have to confront doubts about our relationship to the living God when our lives fall out of working order. How can we be "more than conquerors," while at the same time in a constant war with our worst shortcomings?

The good news for those in Christ who fall down is that, as a continuing sign of God's faithfulness to us, we get back up again. As we surrender to Christ's authority, accepting that He is the potter and we are the clay, we then can experience His victory as our own.

Jesus teaches that before we receive eternal life in the world to come, hardship and persecution will come in this age with the Gospel's hundred-fold blessings. But even with the most punishing influences that the clay might experience, we must never forget that in the potter's hands, the clay comes out of the process intact and better off for the experience.

Jesus says: "He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die." The key factor in the death/life cycle is our relationship with the living Christ. So the age-old question remains: "Believest thou this?"