Death is the Gate of Life

On this Easter morning, pay a visit to His grave...because it is a quiet spot...

 

Let me lead by the hand of meditation, my brother: let me take thee by the arm of thy fancy, and let me again say to thee, "Come, see the place where the Lord lay." 

 

Oh! I have longed for rest, for I have heard this world's rumors in my ears so long that I have begged for "a lodge in some vast wilderness, some boundless contiguity of shade," where I might hide myself forever. I am sick of this tiring and trying life; my frame is weary, my soul is made to repose herself awhile. I would I could lay myself down a little by the edge of some pebbly brook, with no companion save the fair flowers or the nodding willows. I would I could recline in the stillness, where the air brings balm to the tormented brain, where there is no murmur save the hum of the summer bee, no whisper, save that of the zephyrs, and no song except the caroling of the Lark. I wish I could be at ease for a moment. I have become a man of the world; my brain is racked, my soul is tired. Oh! Wouldst thou be quiet, Christian? Merchant, wouldst thou rest from thou toils? Wouldst thou be calm for once? Then come hither. [Christ's tomb] is a pleasant garden, far from the hum of Jerusalem; the noise and din of business will not reach thee there: "Come and see the place where the Lord lay." It is a sweet resting spot, a withdrawing room for thy soul; where thou mayest brush from thy garments the dust of earth and muse awhile in peace...

 

Jesus rose, and as the Lord our savior rose, so must all his followers rise. Die I must--the body must be a carnival of worms; it must be eaten by those tiny cannibals, peradventure it shall be scattered from one portion of the earth to another...[but] like the bones lying in the valley of vision, though separated from one another, the moment God shall speak, the bone will creep to its bone; then the flesh will come upon it; the four winds of heaven shall blow, and the breath shall return. So let me die, let beasts devour me, let fire turn this body into gas and vapor, all its particles shall yet again be restored...Christs same body rose; so shall mine. O, my soul, dost thou now dread to die? Thou wilt lose thy partner body a little while, but thou will be married again in heaven...

 

The grave--what is it? It is the bath in which the Christian puts his clothes of the body to have them washed and cleansed. Death--what is it? It is the waiting-room where we robe ourselves for immortality...Death is the gate of life. 

 

Come, view the place then, with all hallowed meditation, where the Lord lay.

-CH Spurgeon

Delivering mercy

Christians have sometimes their sinking fits, and are as if they were always descending: or as Heman says, 'counted with them that go down into the pit' (Psa. 88:4).  Now guilt is not to such a wind and a tempest, as a load and a burden.  The devil, and sin, and the curse of the law, and death, are gotten upon the shoulders of this poor man, and are treading of him down, that he may sink into, and be swallowed up of his miry place...Yea, there is nothing more common among the saints of old, than this complaint: 'Let neither the water flood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, neither let the pit shut her mouth upon me' (Psa. 69:14, 15). 

...Now for such considereth that underneath them, even at the bottom there lieth a blessing, or that in this deep whereinto they are descending, there lieth a delivering mercy...to catch them, and to save them from sinking for ever, this would be relief unto them, and help them to hope for good...There are of those that have been in the pit, now upon Mount Zion...with the song of the Lamb in their mouths. 

-John Bunyan, All Loves Excelling, pp. 15, 18-19.

Regain your humanity

The New York Times published an incredible article on Saturday by Barbara Fredrickson, a professor at UNC, on the real, physiological and psychological changes that are occurring as we spend more and more time using electronic media--smart phones in particular.   

Our ingrained habits change us. Neurons that fire together, wire together, neuroscientists like to say, reflecting the increasing evidence that experiences leave imprints on our neural pathways, a phenomenon called neuroplasticity. Any habit molds the very structure of your brain in ways that strengthen your proclivity for that habit.         

Plasticity, the propensity to be shaped by experience, isn’t limited to the brain. You already know that when you lead a sedentary life, your muscles atrophy to diminish your physical strength. What you may not know is that your habits of social connection also leave their own physical imprint on you.

 

Fredrickson and her team put their subjects through a course intended to develop empathy and compassion towards themselves and others, and found that as individual's real, face-to-face interactions with other people improved, so too did their health.  What's more--and this is the crazy part--there is an actual correlation between healthy interpersonal relationships and cardiovascular health!  In other words, its literally good for your heart to be in community with others.  

Therefore, as we spend more time glued to our phones--and less time engaging with those around us--the less able we become to create relational bonds with one another. 

  

In short, the more attuned to others you become, the healthier you become, and vice versa. This mutual influence also explains how a lack of positive social contact diminishes people. Your heart’s capacity for friendship also obeys the biological law of “use it or lose it.” If you don’t regularly exercise your ability to connect face to face, you’ll eventually find yourself lacking some of the basic biological capacity to do so...

When you share a smile or laugh with someone face to face, a discernible synchrony emerges between you, as your gestures and biochemistries, even your respective neural firings, come to mirror each other. It’s micro-moments like these, in which a wave of good feeling rolls through two brains and bodies at once, that build your capacity to empathize as well as to improve your health.

If you don’t regularly exercise this capacity, it withers. Lucky for us, connecting with others does good and feels good, and opportunities to do so abound.

Now, this isn't really news to anybody.  We all know the smart phone/social media explosion has had a generally negative influence on interpersonal relationships (save us from our phones!).  But it should shake us up a little bit to know that there is a growing collection of data to confirm it.  People are lonelier than ever before, and wondering why, when they seem so "connected" to everybody all the time.  Fredrickson gives us, at least in part, an answer. 

The implications are widespread, especially when considering the issue from a Christian worldview.  Words like "community" and "connection" have reached ubiquity in Christian churches and books, but for good reason.  We need each other.  We were created this way.  Its important for our hearts--spiritually, physically--to know others, and be known by them.  What the gospel tells us is that what prohibits this is our sin.  Knowing we should be perfect, but are not, makes us fear that if the person with whom we want to relate (friend, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife, mother, father, son, daughter, etc.) were to really know us in the repulsiveness of our thoughts, desires, and actions, they would want no part of it.  And so we manage what they see.  This is not new.  But it amplifies something we've always been doing.

Things like Facebook, Twitter, and the like make it easier than ever for us to create and manage an identity which will present us in the most favorable light possible.  And it is wonderfully (tragically) ironic that as we're doing these things in an effort to ensure relational eligibility, in the hope that we will be known, we are actually dulling and weakening our ability to do so.  What we are doing here is, at the root, an exercise in self-justification.  We are, through the augmentation of what people perceive to be true about us, attempting to obtain the confirmation from others (including God, I would argue, even if we don't think we are) that we are "right or reasonable"--Webster's definition of the word "justify".

 

This idea--that if we can keep people from knowing us at our worst we can find deep connection, love, relationships, etc.--is exactly the opposite of what we find in the gospel.  It is true that our sin is repulsive, deep, dark, and severe.  But what we find in the work of Jesus for us is that for Christians, who we are has been hidden in who he is.  And because of this, we are free to open ourselves to one another and be honest about the reality that we are not who we should have been, and joyful about the fact that who we should have been has been granted us in love through Christ.  In other words, what matters, ultimately, is not what others think of you, because Christ covered you with himself.  You can rest from the endless and exhausting task of proving yourself right to others and to God.  Its an impossible and dishonest task anyway.  You and I are not right--to God or to others.  But Christ has united himself to those who believe in him in such a way that we may call him brother, co-heirs in all the blessing that is due to him.  That's God's solution to our problem.  With it, you can rest and go free.

 

So understand and fight against the natural inclination to self-justify.  But also remember that God has created you to be in relationship with real people in time and space.  This world is his good creation, and we, as Fredrickson shows, are made to be in relationship with one another.  But what we all want won't come through the most meticulously edited Facebook profile, or the most witty and followed Twitter feed.  This is only possible, in its fullest, most restful and most fulfilling sense, in real life protected by the justification we receive before God and man through faith in Jesus Christ. 

 

In light of all this, Fredrickson offers this wonderful bit of advice:

So the next time you see a friend,or a child, spending too much of their day facing a screen, extend a hand and invite him back to the world of real social encounters. You’ll not only build up his health and empathic skills, but yours as well. Friends don’t let friends lose their capacity for humanity.

You are within reach

When we think his mercy is clean gone, and that ourselves are free among the dead, and of the number that he remembereth no more, then he can reach us, and cause that again we stand before him...There is a length..beyond apprehension or belief, in the arm of the strength of the Lord; and this is that which the Apostle intended by this word, Length; namely, To insinuate what a reach there is in the mercy of God, how far it can extend itself.

...This therefore should encourage them that for the present cannot stand, but that do fly before their guilt: Them that feel no help nor stay, but that go, as to their thinking, every day by the power of temptation, driven yet farther off from God, and from the hope of obtaining of his mercy to their salvation; poor creature, I will not now ask thee how thou camest into this condition, or how long this has been thy state; but I will say before thee, and I prithee hear me, O the length of the saving arm of God!  As yet thou art within reach thereof...do not thou conclude, that because thou canst not reach God by thy short stump, therefore he cannot reach thee with his long arm...for it is long, and none knows how long.

-John Bunyan, All Loves Excelling, pp. 13-14.

A memento:

Alas!  the sin of God's children seemeth sometimes to overspread not only their flesh, and the face of their souls, but the whole face of heaven.  And what shall he do now, that is a stranger to this breadth, made mention of in [Eph. 3:18]? Why, he must despair, lie down and die, and shut up his heart against all comfort, unless he...can, at least, apprehend what is this breadth, or the breadth of mercy intended in this place...

This therefore should be that upon which those that see the spreading nature of sin, and the leprosy and contagion thereof should meditate, to wit: The broadness of the grace and mercy of God in Christ.  This will poise and stay the soul; this will relieve and support the soul in and under those many misgiving and desponding thoughts unto which we are subject when afflicted with the apprehensions of sin, and the abounding nature of it...Let this therefore, when thou seest the spreading nature of thy sin, be a memento to thee, to the end thou may'st not sink and die in thy soul.

-John Bunyan, All Loves Excelling, pp. 9-11

To your low and trembling spirit:

Bunyan comments on Eph. 3:17-19--

[Breadth, length, height and depth] are made use of the show the Ephesians, that God with what he is in himself, and with what he hath in his power, is all for the use and profit of the believers...As who should say, the High God is yours; the God that fills the heaven and earth is yours; the God whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, is yours; yea, the God whose works are wonderful and whose ways are past finding out, is yours...It is my support, it is my relief; it is my comfort in all my tribulations, and I would have it yours, and so it will when we live in the lively faith thereof.

...So we should conclude that all this is love to us, for Christ's sake; and then dilate with it thus in our minds, and enlarge it thus in our meditations; saying still to our low and trembling spirits: 'It is high as heaven; what canst thou do?  deeper than hell; what canst thou know?  the measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.'

-John Bunyan, All Loves Excelling, pp. 5-6.