Home from the Dead
I would like to invite you to consider a concept, really a reversal of thinking if you will. I actually got the idea from a FNM song called, From the Dead, where Mike Patton sings about the Homecoming Parade a person experiences when they die, a place where they turn their former earthly miseries into nursery rhymes,” shine like the sun, and roar like lions. The song seems to support the notion that here, on earth, is the place that we are dead, and that at our death, we will be welcomed home (as having come back from the dead).
When we think about this idea it makes some sense because this is the realm of the dead and dying. Our beauty fades and dies, our health, our fortunes and empires, even the very memory of most people, no matter how famous, dies and disappears in lips of those abiding in this realm. In the name of self-improvement some people are dying to former behaviors and former things but ultimately learn that our improvements are short-lived, as the effects of time on our personal advancements make improvements obsolete and in the end relatively unimportant as we gasp our final breaths. Yes, those who come after us may stand on our shoulders and on what have contributed to the “collective cause,” but again, in the end, like fallen leaves, what we are, what we do, what we teach and believe all become part of a mushy forest floor, and our existences end up mulch for another generation to sprout from before it dies too. Don’t take this wrong – I think and see life as a gift – but it is in the very least ephemeral, and transient, and unquestionably riddled with and surrounded by that existential driver labeled, “death.”
Christian Reality and the Material World
Perhaps without knowing it, Mr. Patton, who I enjoy very much as a musician and character, is speaking to the Christian reality that this life (and the things of it) while certainly a gift from our maker, is all headed to death. Annihilation of the material. Obliteration of accomplishment. Destruction of the temporal. Loss of memory. As the scripture describes it, a vapor on glass. What remains? Contrary to the views of our atheist friends, I suggest that we remain. Our beings – what we collectively became in mind, will and emotion. And, according to that song at least, we will then all be “welcomed home from the dead.”
What will this existence mean to us mortals, who pass through this realm as “spirits in a material world,” so to speak, when we stand before our maker unsubstantiated and unsupported by flesh, bones, bodies, books, houses, cars, religion, fame, fortune and fun? What does the future spiritual realm hold for those who banked their everything on that which is here?
Eternal Perspective
I am personally flummoxed by people who focus their everything on the here and now. I cannot understand the logic as once the here and now are over every single one of us disappear forever. When Yeshua came to earth, incarnate, the very word of His Father made flesh, and he taught repeatedly and in many places and ways, to keep and build upon an eternal view. To store up treasures in heaven. He said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. He said, “seek your first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” He said, “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” He said ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” I suggest that all people, when they get on the train to heaven, exiting this land of the dead, will be able to bring one thing with them and one thing alone – real love because real Godly love does not die. It is the one thing that exists beyond the land of the dead.
The Enduring Nature of Love
And when it is legitimate and real, it lasts and is welcomed in that eternal land of the living. And the love we possess, and share, and give, and live by in this life will be the only thing, the only product from this life, that we will actually retain and possess. It may be the very thing that we are clothed with, what builds our resurrected bodies, what our mansions are constructed with.
Love and Life
The wonderful blessed thing about being a receiver of Christ by faith in this life, is the fact that while we exist in this land of death, we can abide in life above WHILE we learn to love, more and more, better and better, according to the power that God gives those who seek and love Him. I suggest that we will not take non-agape love items with us on that train. There’s no room for such. Just our souls, our minds, our wills, our hearts – and whatever genuine love retained within them, first for God, and then for others.
The Connection Between Love and Eternity
And I think at that point the question of “what kind of love did you give?” will then be synonymously understood as, “what kind of life did you live?” And will ultimately become, “what kind of eternity you will have.” Consider it. And write your comments below! We will respond to them next week on the HOTM long show.
