Tag: death & resurrection

Revisiting Life and Death: The Gospel from Beginning to End

We can have every choice (but eternal life) without God, or we can let go of every other choice to choose God (and gain eternal life).

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Chris Frayley On Rock at River Bend

“O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?”

These familiar phrases from 1 Corinthians. 15:55 (quoting Hosea 13:14) jumped out at me as I read them again. Of course, I know that God has swallowed up death in victory through the resurrection of Jesus Christ! But, what does that really mean for us?

This statement is the tip of the iceberg, and it occurs to me that we cannot understand without remembering and contemplating “how we got here”. Therefore, we must go back to the beginning. Continue reading “Revisiting Life and Death: The Gospel from Beginning to End” →

In My Place

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Pilots Working in an Aeroplane During a Commercial FlightFew things really bring the story of Christ and what he did for us into sharp focus. We know it intellectually, but it does not really register with the clarity and presence that such a cosmic event should. We get distracted with the mundane elements of life and the fleeting excitements that pull our attention away from God’s ultimate act of love.

I am as guilty as anyone. I find myself registering somewhere in the depths of my soul, somewhere in the back of my mind, that this amazing, unbelievable act of love was (is) as real as anything in my life, actually the most real and profoundly significant reality in my life, and yet I do not live as if that were really true. The fact that it registers so dully with my senses most of the time is something I recognize, but seem powerless (or lacking in will) to summon to the surface of my daily consciousness.

There are times when that eternal Act becomes more present than others. For some people, experiences have etched the reality of that Act more deeply into the consciousness, and it usually comes through pain, tragedy or great mercy and near avoidance of pain and tragedy. I think it can happen on both sides of that divide.

This link is to one of those events, an event that we know all too well. This is a view from a pilot who sat in the cockpit of one of the planes that never reached its intended destination on 9/11.

In My Seat – A Pilot’s Story from Sept. 10th-11th