Roses flower and bloom, resplendent in their vibrant and beautiful colors. Left to themselves, they prosper and propagate because they are alive. Man applies fertilizer and tills the soil. The roses bloom earlier and with more blossoms. Man grafts the roses and comes up with new varieties of roses. And man begins thinking he is the creator of the rose.
Man harvests wood from trees and is able to make so many wonderful things from the wood. He builds a house, the furnitures in side the house, the decor to transform the house into a home and the toys for his children to play with. And man begins thinking trees grow to serve and please him, being the superior being.
Yet life is bigger than man. Life goes to the fittest and the most worthy. And man is often not the fittest nor the most worthy of all the living things here on earth. Without bees, many plants will not be pollinated and many animals will starve including man. If algae were to disappear from the oceans, earth’s total ecosystem would collapse. If man were to disappear from earth, the earth will probably rejuvenate itself and prosper, with new species emerging. Man lives on earth for about six to eight decades. Many living things on earth have been around for some six to eight thousand years. Indeed, who is more fit and more worthy to live on earth? The vanity of man indeed.
Because of his consciousness and his capacity to think and to reason, man acts as if he owned the earth. We don’t. We are just one of the many living on this planet. Man thinks everything on earth is meant to serve his purpose. I don’t believe so. No less than man, the trees and the stars have a right to be here. As the roses blossom, life also unfolds; its unfolding a mystery. Life is richer and bigger than our feeble mind can possibly comprehend. Life, like matter, does not die. Like matter being transformed from one form or state to another, life is never taken away. It is merely changed and transformed. The transformation of matter is so easy to demonstrate in physics. But why do we find it hard to believe that life is similarly transformed? For matter, to be is to forever. For man, to live is to live forever. This thought is sobering.
Jesus said to them, ‘Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die any more, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.’
Luke 20:27-36,38-40