Higher Than the Angels
I've been thinking about Dad an awful lot this winter. As spring break approaches, I'll sometimes think about going to Florida to visit him. And then I'll remember that he's dead.
The guy who watches me shave every morning looks more and more like the guy who used to dandle me on his knee, and tuck me in at night, and kneel by my bed to pray for me when I was sick. Is it any wonder then that after having watched my Dad stop breathing, and held his hand as his soul left his body that I have been thinking an awful lot about my own mortality?
I've already written on the tragedy of death (A Good Word). But I mentioned something in that piece that I think needs further elucidation. I wrote "But I don't believe, and my Dad didn't believe that the story ended with the banishment of Adam and Eve from Paradise. The Uncreated One came into the world to restore all of creation. The Creator of Man became a man to redeem all men. The Deathless One endured death to destroy death. Adam and Eve are not the end of the story. Jesus is." What did I mean by that?
At the time, I'm sure I was thinking merely of the eternal life that Jesus brought into the world, that death was not the end. But recently I've been thinking about the awesome goodness and power of God. Originally, He made us a little lower than the angels. We messed that up, preferring instead to be merely animals. But God, through His assumption of our human nature, death and resurrection, has improved on His original design by making us partakers of His divine nature. In the end, through the grace of God, we are all capable of being raised higher than the angels.
Is there suffering and pain and death in the meantime (a very long meantime)? Of course, but God has made, is making, will make it better, much better than Adam and Eve had it. Incomparably better. Indescribably better.
The other night I was listening to an interview with a recently widowed woman who was struggling with her grief and her faith that God could work even this out for good. She said that in order to keep herself together she sometimes walks around the house yelling to herself, "God is in control. He knows what He's doing. Help me to trust You, God." But I'm sure that even if she had had perfect faith, it would still hurt. Even Jesus wept at the death of a friend.
The guy who watches me shave every morning looks more and more like the guy who used to dandle me on his knee, and tuck me in at night, and kneel by my bed to pray for me when I was sick. Is it any wonder then that after having watched my Dad stop breathing, and held his hand as his soul left his body that I have been thinking an awful lot about my own mortality?
I've already written on the tragedy of death (A Good Word). But I mentioned something in that piece that I think needs further elucidation. I wrote "But I don't believe, and my Dad didn't believe that the story ended with the banishment of Adam and Eve from Paradise. The Uncreated One came into the world to restore all of creation. The Creator of Man became a man to redeem all men. The Deathless One endured death to destroy death. Adam and Eve are not the end of the story. Jesus is." What did I mean by that?
At the time, I'm sure I was thinking merely of the eternal life that Jesus brought into the world, that death was not the end. But recently I've been thinking about the awesome goodness and power of God. Originally, He made us a little lower than the angels. We messed that up, preferring instead to be merely animals. But God, through His assumption of our human nature, death and resurrection, has improved on His original design by making us partakers of His divine nature. In the end, through the grace of God, we are all capable of being raised higher than the angels.
Is there suffering and pain and death in the meantime (a very long meantime)? Of course, but God has made, is making, will make it better, much better than Adam and Eve had it. Incomparably better. Indescribably better.
The other night I was listening to an interview with a recently widowed woman who was struggling with her grief and her faith that God could work even this out for good. She said that in order to keep herself together she sometimes walks around the house yelling to herself, "God is in control. He knows what He's doing. Help me to trust You, God." But I'm sure that even if she had had perfect faith, it would still hurt. Even Jesus wept at the death of a friend.
Labels: Dad
posted by Rich @ 10:17
1 Comments:
At 5:53 PM,
Centurion said…
How true it is that, having handed over our immortality (by way of breaking communion with God), we have brought into this universe diverse forms of corruption on a scale that goes far beyond our capability to comprehend. One of those being the corruption of time. Instead of a seamless expansion of experience, we now suffer through endless change-one of those being mortality.Because of this corruption we are born, grow old and finally die. That is not the way it was originally supposed to be. This endless change in turn is painful to endure. We watch loved ones becoming enfeebled and finally leave us with no hope of apparent return and see ourselves going down that same road. From nothingness to nothingness is the empirical messege of this (corrupt) life, but as you so aptly put "the good word" is that it is not the end of this woeful story. The Triune God was not about to let the crown of His matieral creation fade back into oblivion. He created us to love us and for us to return that love to Him.Springing forth from that faithful love His only Begotten Son became incarnate to restore us, not as your indicated, to our original state but to some thing incomparably better. We in this present world, for lack of a better word, are being cured by the fire of our own created suffering. Make no mistake, we brought this on ourselves. But our Lord in His trancendent love for us changed the nature of our pain into something purposful. We now become "Gods by Grace". This is a painful proccess to be sure,but now thank God, it is not a pointless one.
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