Life in Death

As Christians we talk a lot about life after death. Eternal life. We talk about heaven as this distant place we long to get to. This isn’t bad. But I wonder…

Is there life in death?

I think there are seasons in life characterized by deaths. Not just physical death, but a dying… a dying to our own agenda, our expectation, our desire, our plans.

It’s a dying that’s a combination of deep disappointment and discouragement fused together like a knot in the throat, a pit in the stomach.

Is there life in this place? Where death is happening? When death is not a final completion, but an ongoing journey of loss? Loss after loss.

Does Jesus offer life in this place? And if He does, how do we find it?

One of my best friends reminded me of this verse today (paraphrased): Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it does not bear much fruit.

It’s counterintuitive that fruit comes from death, that fruit is borne from unlikely, unhelpful, disabled, diseased, weak, dying places. But this verse makes it clear. I mean it’s basically a foreshadowing of this: Jesus had to die to save us.

What would have happened He was never crucified? But instead He performed miracle after miracle and proved His majesty and glory that way and then ascended into heaven? Why did He have to die in order save many, in order to bear much fruit?

This is a mystery I don’t fully understand yet, but I think it has to do with sacrifice; with paying the ultimate price, so that the ultimate price led to the ultimate fruit: eternal life and the saving of the world---the whole world.

The verse talks not just about fruit, but bearing much fruit.

So in our dying, there isn’t just life, but much fruit.

I’m realizing the key to bearing fruit in death and finding life in death is this:

Open eyes.

Our eyes must be open to see the threads of life flowing through our dying places. The glimpses of life in what feels like constant darkness. To track like a patient hunter in the forest, the nuanced movements of the Holy Spirit, clarifying the season, repositioning the throne of death, overshadowing it with life.

The eyes of my heart, my spirit, even my physical eyes must be open to see the life that Jesus always offers no matter what season I find myself in.

In Jesus there is always life. No matter my circumstance.

God, I open my eyes as I enter into my first ever sabbatical from work and church. I open my eyes to see the life you are offering me in the midst of this season of death. I open my eyes to accept this season as one not just of death, but of life in death.

I say yes to your life. I choose to open my eyes. I choose to see the way you see.

N., I pray that you experience life in all things. That even as I go through this season of my own, that it somehow plants a seed of truth in your being that enables you to navigate seasons of deaths with wide open eyes. That you would find God in all things, you would see Him in the recesses of hard circumstances, in dark corners of disappointment, in hidden places of worry. I pray that as you are knitted together, that as your eyes form, that they would be graced with a spiritual openness to see life in death your whole life. 

May your eyes know that in Jesus there is always life.