The hands of God and death part 4

I had intended this to be a three part blog post, but my mind got the best of me on my ride into work this morning so I had to type this one out to conclude it all.

It's a law: when I, as a man, die to something I come alive to something else. And it is precisely in that dying to and coming alive to where both the terror and peace of death reside. If I, as a man, die to selfishness I come alive to other-centeredness. Unfortunately the converse is true as well. Feeding the Spirit of God who is in me will result in a diminishing desire to gratify my sinful nature. I will be progressively dying to my sin and coming alive to the Spirit. But, if I continually come alive to my sin I will become more and more dead to the Spirit and so much so that I may never again hear his voice this side of heaven.

There will come a day when my body will wear out or malfunction so epically that I will die. But, in so doing, I will come alive to something else. I will die a mortal man and come alive to immortality. I will die to mourning and come alive to a world where there is no sorrow. I will die to seeing through a veil that causes even God's most beautiful creation to be dimly lit into a place where there is no need for the sun because of the glorious light shone forth by the Son himself.

And there is a foretaste of all of that available to me today. There is a foretaste of my physical death when I am injured or ill. There is also one of my death to everything that is ungodly as I, on rare occasions, function as God had intended me to all along. There is a taste of my coming alive again as well when I regain my previous capabilities or strength or when I sense God's good pleasure.

That, in a nutshell, is why death is so attractive to me. Because I know that by it I come alive to something that I could not have had I not died.