The things I have described in this series of articles are glimpses of the glory of a God Who has not abandoned His creation to the dust of history. These small illustrations hint at the deeper and grander work He has taken on of reclaiming and remaking His human creation.
How can He take us, who are irretrievably broken and damaged– well on our way to decay and ultimate destruction– and make us into something truly special and remarkable? How can He possibly turn these "sow's ears into silk purses?" Why would He want to take a truckload of garbage and attempt to make it into something sweet and savory?
At first glance, a pile of compost may appear a common, dirty, even ignoble sort of thing, but looking deeper into its workings you can begin to see it is a wondrous, maybe even a miraculous thing. If you look close enough you will see God's hand at work here. What occurs in a compost pile is illustrative of how God incorporated His redemptive plans and purposes into even the lowest levels of this universe.
Scientific inquiry indicates to us that this universe is "winding down," that entropy/chaos/randomness is on the increase, and that some sort of, yet unknown, cosmic death awaits the entire system. And experience shows each one of us that the same sort of process and fate remains the lot of every living thing that populates this universe. If we know anything about life, we know it will wind down, it will degrade, it will end in death– whether by violent means, or with a whimper.
We spend so much effort, so much of our limited time here, in attempting to avoid these absolute certainties. Disease and infirmity dog our steps, and yet we struggle to avoid it. Our aging bodies become slower, weaker, duller, and less attractive, so we move heaven and earth in an attempt to forestall the process. And when our physical bodies finally die, we try to prevent their decay and their becoming food for worms, so we pump them full of formaldehyde, paint them over with a fresh coat of cosmetics, and dress them up in a brand new suit. What folly. What hubris. What tragedy.
I am not saying that death is something to be embraced. Death is the visible stain of sin– of isolation from our Creator and from real life. Death proves that the lives we live are only incomplete and partial expressions of the full Life that exists in Him. But if physical death were somehow eradicated from our lot, we would then be doomed to living an eternal nightmare of brokenness and longing. This would surely and truly be hell– knowing that we were surrounded and filled to overflowing with things as they ought not be. This would be a horror unspeakable. And so, God in His amazing mercy allowed this terrible situation to have a real end. There is a sense in which death, as horrible and wrenching as it is, can be a sweet gift, a sweet release.
The most difficult thing to understand in all this is the fact that the Creator Himself chose freely and without compulsion (other than the compulsion of His unfathomable love) to enter into our own sorry condition, our lowly estate, and to experience life as it really is in this marred world. He was born amidst blood, the anguished cries of childbirth– His own cries as well as those of his birthing mother. And the foul stink of a barnyard invaded His holy nostrils with His first gasp of earth's air. Why– how– could He come here?
He had to know that at the end of it all lay His own death. And just as His entrance into the world was common, dirty, and ignoble, so He must have known that His exit from it would not be without the same blood, the same cries (from His mother and Himself), and the same dirty, unseemly surroundings. In between, He must have experienced those thirty-odd years with the same keen awareness of broken life– of decay and of death– surrounding Him on every side. With every breath He drew, He must have smelled the repugnant aroma of decay and purtrefaction all around Him. Why would He choose this, not only the experience of horrors around Him, but the unspeakable horror of His own end?
The only satisfying (and true) answer to this question is that He absolutely knew that His own experience of life ending in death was the singular remedy to the dying lives all of us are doomed to live otherwise. His life-to-death could and would plug the hole in our own lives. His tasting of our low estate, and drinking it to the dregs, would mean we would not have to drink the cup rightly assigned to us. His living and dying in our place would satisfy our own yet-empty graves longing to be filled by cold lifeless bodies. He knew that He alone possessed the surpassing strength, the incomparable beauty, and the undying love to take up our cause and to take our place.
For us who have entered into this mercifiul knowledge, who have so undeservedly received the understanding of what our Creator has done for us, a physical death still awaits us, though the continuance of our lives has been guaranteed. But we can now live with the eternal perspective of what true life is, and what this minor death means. Death is now for us what decay is for the compost pile, what fermentation is to wine. Death is simply the process of God's making our ended lives into something new, something better, something far richer, deeper and more effective and beautiful than we can ever know in this life. Our physical deaths will not end our lives, but will be used by Him to make us into some kind of amazing "fertilizer"– the stuff with which He plans to grow yet-unimagined fruit in His eternal vineyard.
Fine grapes are not grown simply for their delightful beauty on the vine, or even for their taste in the mouth, but are grown to be crushed and bled into a vat, molded and decayed into something else, and then stored away in the damp darkness of a cellar. And so, our physical lives are planned for much more than the here and now. Our physical deaths are simply the fermentation of our physical lives into much more. We are destined for an exquisite and rare vintage– grown on vines pruned by the Master Husbandman, made into wine by the Master Vintner, and reserved for the table and infinite enjoyment of the King Himself.
Perhaps one day in the future, as the Ancient of Days strides across a gray earth, which lies covered in the ashen remains of a blazing judgement, He will stoop down and sift the ashes through His fingers. And He may find remaining in His palm a brilliant gold nugget, or a rare opal gem scintillating in the light, or a beautiful translucent sculpture of electric blue. And He will, once again, declare it to be "Very good!"
In these moments unexpected, when this broken universe deals us a "bad hand," when we experience failure, pain, disease, decay, and even death, we can rejoice in the One Who has overcome it all, and Who will triumph over these times, transforming all difficulties into the incredible, sweet smell of life. I think that Saul of Tarsus said it best to those believers in Corinth—
"For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved, and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life." (2 Corinthians 2:15-16)
"Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed, day by day. For these momentary and light afflictions are producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are unseen are eternal." (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)
(If you missed the beginning of this article, START here: )
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
>>> Unless otherwise attributed, all text and images are Copyright, Bill Brockmeier, 2015. All rights reserved.
Note: the particular image above is displayed under Fair Use Doctrine for illustrative purposes only
No comments:
Post a Comment