I’ve been trying to put together this post for the past week, sitting down to write here and there. And for various reasons, it just hasn’t come together. Today, I am determined to post.
What I’ve been trying to put together in words is the great tension I have been feeling between the elation of life and the dread of death. I’ve felt wimpy and puny and very un-Christian for the fear I’ve been feeling. If heaven is as certain as I claim, then what is there to panic about death? Yet now that it is Spring, the world is so full of life, and my body feels healthy and is getting stronger. Everything in me is crying out to live. Here and now.
I know that somewhere in between this pendulum swing of emotions is the peace that Jesus offers. He wants me to embrace life on earth, to enjoy the gifts that He’s given, to participate fully in relationships and circumstances. But he doesn’t want me to cling too tightly to life here on earth because it is only a shadow of what’s to come. More life!
Some days, with death peering over my shoulder, it’s hard to remember that the desire for life, both this one and the one to come, is from God. But slowly I am finding my way down the narrow path that embraces both lives, and the death that separates them, trusting that Jesus goes with me always.
my battle is anxiety depression…two times in a dark deep hole that felt like death for weeks. and now i and taking drugs that make it so i can function day to day. the feelings i felt when there were impossible to explain to anyone that has not gone through it. and yet, i had no doubt that it was the feeling of death…i do not want to go their again…it is a fear of mine that God helps me with. i want life now and i want life forever with God. but, we all will go through that death/sleep. Jesus became my only friend in that place and i know that i can have faith in Him to be with me no matter what i go through. it is my most treasured knowledge and my only true comfort here. i pray that it is always a comfort and a strengh for you. the other day i was laying on the bed feeling a bit pittful for myself and after a while a heard a soft voice say to me…get up and live. so i thought about it for a couple minutes…wondering if i really heard it and then wiped my eyes and got up. i often repeat it to myself, and it gives me strength and encouragement.
Charity
I haven’t stopped by in a while but so glad I did. I’m so happy for you – that God has blessed and sustained you with this good news.
I know what you mean about heaven…if it’s what we believe it to be, why would we not say “for me to live is Christ, to die is gain”.
Yet, we are so often afraid – it’s humbling and keeps us aware of our frailty before God.
Just popping in to say hi. Hi and I love you.
Charity,
Just wonder how you’re doing, today.
Blessings on you, and praying for you, sister.
I’m celebrating with you Charity!!
Ohh Charity,
So good to see you back in the saddle fully. I am so sorry to have fallen off the map for awhile here. I have been praying for you.
Good news on the blood work. There truly is power in the blood, the blood of Jesus roaming through your veins.
-Shalom
Fear of death. How many of us can really say we hold none of that? Or even just a sense that we prefer life? And don’t we find people who long for death to be in need of counsel…
Anyway, so much love to you. And so much gratitude that you express what others may feel in their hearts but not find the courage to say.
Charity,
Hi there. I’m here at the Calvin Festival. L.L. and I were just chatting about how you two met providentially at the last conference. What wonderful story! Wish you could’ve been here.
Sorry that I haven’t checked in with you lately. Praise God that all is currently normal. God’s continued blessings to you.
Ed G.
Charity,
You’ll be interested in my posting today as it has L.L.’s hands on it.
Wow, to think you were here two years ago with her to the same festival! That would have been nice to have met you then!
Here’s to life now, and life forever- together in Jesus. Great when some of that happens now, and someday forever!
Hope you’re having a good day.
Oh, and by the way, Deb and I are meeting L.L. tomorrow evening. So glad she is here for the writer’s festival at Calvin College. Hope she immensely enjoys it. I wonder if she has a part in it. I didn’t look over the entire schedule well enough to know. But it would be nice if you were here, too. You’d enjoy that festival. And right now the weather here is great.
Praise the Lord, Charity!
I am reading and enjoying and benefiting from N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope. Excellent and speaks in regard to what you’re talking about. In his words our hope in Jesus is about the life AFTER life after death, the resurrection and new creation of all things in Jesus. I actually am reading a copy from our public library system. Maybe you can get one to at least look at, though you’d have no trouble getting through it and probably in relatively short time. It’s a book that posits resurrection in Jesus as having more to do with the present world as well as the world to come, how that’s related, and how what we do here does matter for the world to come. I’m weak in thinking well at all, that way, and this is a book I’ll have to work on, so eventually I’ll probably get my own copy. Like his books, you at times, may not always track or agree, but alot of good thought there as you press through, and clearly written as he does.
I really like your post here. Though that’s always true. But the way you put this is interesting.
Blessings on you,siser, and healing in Jesus! And keep us posted.