Death to Life

Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12.24)

What you sow does not come to life unless it dies (1 Corinthians 15.36)

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they end. As for tongues, they cease. As for knowledge, it passes (1 Corinthians 13.8)

Jesus said: “Those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mark 8.35)

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Nothing, it seems to me (and it strikes me as purest paradox: at first glance, making little sense, being nonsense, yet, at heart, embracing, embodying deepest truth), has life that is not wrought from death…

The cosmos formed (and forms still) by God’s will through Spirit-breath looming o’er chaos vast and deep; a paroxysmal, disintegrating Big-Bang into galaxies of suns, moons, stars, ever-expanding, never-ending.

Babies emerge into this world from the depths (at the death!) of their first-conceived, enwombed living.

Plants arise from seeds falling, then dying in the warming tomb of Mother Earth.

Bread is made from ground, crushed grain and wine from trampled, shredded grapes.

The Apostle proclaimed that prophecies – long ago spoken betoken their fulfillment, which when comes – end; ceding, leading the way for newer words of come what may. And our tongues cease speaking at the moment of our dying and our new-borning entry into our promised larger-living. And prior and present knowledge surrenders ground, supplanted by newest discoveries.

Jesus taught that salvation is brought, bought at the bloody cost of cross-borne death.

Hence, I wonder, from whence did the lesson, the lie come that living consists in self-saving and not the self-sacrifice of love-giving?

© 2021 PRA

#deathbeforelife #lifeafterdeath