Deep within the human heart is the undying belief is that life is stronger than death. Death is very frightening. It speaks of a finality that life has come to an end. Life, for all its troubles and tribulations, is a gift to be truly cherished and even clung to even when this would take heroic efforts. At the same time, there is a strong intimation in every human being that life is the greatest value and event in the whole universe; that, in spite of the evanescence of everything, man’s life transcends all this transitoriness.
Even nature proclaims this permanence of life. Winter has come to an end and the bare branches of trees are beginning to put out their green leaves again. Flowers that have been asleep during the cold winter months are putting out their beautiful colors. Birds and beasts that have been quiet and hidden during the dark winter days are coming back to be alive again.
It took billions of years. But from a single simple particle of dense energy, the whole cosmos has been moving and growing and changing all this time to finally enable life to finally come forth. Remove the time. Remove the space. And there is only the Creator speaking the Word to let things be and things come into being. I do not believe He meant to create just inanimate rocks or even just blazing stars. Life was what he set out to create – the life that is in me and in every living creature.
It may sound like a tautology but life is what life is all about. As we come to the end of Lent into the glory of Easter, I think of the life that I have received as a gift from my Creator and how this lift of life is brought up to an even greater fullness by my Redeemer and how even today I am guided on how to live this life by His Spirit. I may be just a speck in the universe but I am the apex to the creation and its evolution from the big bang to my life today. I cannot move the stars to form galaxies but I can put stars into the live of people around me. I may not be able to coax life out of inanimate rocks and dust but I can inject life and energy in people I love and care for. I cannot create the colors of nature and the environment but I can bring color into the lives of those I come in contact with. I cannot create a living world out of a rocky planet but I can create a small paradise in the corner of the earth where live.
In gratitude and humility, I will cherish and relish the gift of life I have been given.
I trust in the LORD; my soul trusts in his word.
When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him;
but Mary sat at home.
Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.”
Martha said, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe
that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”
John 11:20-27