For thousands of years humans of all cultures and all races have acknowledged the inevitability of physical death but have refused to accept that this event is the end of personal existence. Almost all religions and tribal mythologies have some concept of an afterlife. Only recently have atheists and humanists rejected the idea that there is any other form of existence for us. I suspect that the hardest problem with accepting an atheistic world view is giving up the hope of resurrection.
There is an old saying, “Nothing is certain but death and taxes”. In the natural world, life and death are fundamental to existence. Jesus said,
“I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds”.
Our physical bodies consist of about 7*1027 atoms (that’s a 7 followed by 27 zeros!) or seven billion billion billion atoms. These atoms do not really belong to us, they are constantly being replenished and eventually have to be given up to the ground, and then to produce other life.
But we are not just flesh and blood. The real you, and the real me, is the breath that God breathed into us; what we call our spirits. The hope and the certainty of resurrection is that even though our bodies die, our spirit can live on for ever. Death, mankind’s oldest enemy, was defeated when Jesus as the Son of God, died a terrible death on the cross but three days later was resurrected, bringing hope to us all. The Spirit of God, alive in Jesus, made it impossible for him to stay dead. That same Spirit of God, alive in us, means that we too have the hope of resurrection (see Romans 8:11). Continue reading “Resurrection”
Compassion and Justice
This morning, at the meeting of our church, we sang an old hymn. “What’s so strange about that?” you may ask. Well, we normally sing more modern worship songs, and rarely sing what would normally be described as a hymn.
The other day we watched a film about a Jew, living in America, who had escaped Austria when the Nazis took over. Before she left Austria, the Nazis stole all the family possessions, including a famous work of art worth millions of dollars. Sixty years later the painting was displayed in an art gallery in Vienna and the film describes her, eventually successful, efforts to restore the painting to its rightful owner.
Compassion and Justice 