I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I really have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that I am aging. I keep thinking I'm still in my early 20's, and that my body is that same 20-year-old body that I used to have. There's something profoundly humbling about growing older every year knowing that my body is becoming, for the most part, less effective and less reliable. It's also a bit scary.
What's weird is that I feel like I've learned so much in life that my mind is full and bursting, and it seems like my body should have the same exuberance and energy. It seems like I should constantly be getting better, not becoming weaker. And even though I know in my mind that this isn't the way the real world works, something in my heart balks at the idea that I am slowly breaking down, decaying. Nothing hit this point home harder for me than the death of my father three years ago. I should have known that one day my father would die. Granted, he was only 63 and his death by heart attack was unexpected and gut-wrenching, yet my response to his death wasn't simply about the earliness of his death--my reaction was horror that it happened at all. It didn't feel right. It felt unnatural. My grappling with the realization that he was gone and that there was nothing left of him rocked me to my core. How could someone I love so much, someone whom I'd accepted as a staple of life, be gone?
And then it hit me. One day, I too will be gone. I too will just be a memory attached to photographs and a few old possessions. And my body is slowly preparing for this day--every year showing the signs of wear and tear. It was a wake up call for sure. I do believe that many of us live in denial of the fact of death. We defy it with our vitamins and weight loss regimes, we thwart it with our lotions and exfoliations, we ignore it with our entertainment and our devices--but still it's there waiting in those quiet moments when we are alone whispering what we most fear. That one day it will all be over.
This is a message that kills hope. This is a message that makes us want to crawl into a corner and cry. It is the theme that haunts every book, every movie, every work of art--how to escape the end.
But, thankfully, that isn't the only message out there. "[He] will deliver those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery." (Hebrews 2:15 ESV). This chapter speaks of the plan of God to redeem man, to bring a glorious salvation. One in which this tiny, feeble life of ours is just the beginning--the seed that needs to die in order to birth who we were really meant to be. The part of us that is meant to live forever. You see, we know this intrinsically, don't we? I've spoken to non-believers and nominal believers who don't subscribe to the biblical view of things, and most seem to feel that there has to be more. That something else happens after death. In theory, many can say that nothing happens when we die, but it's hard to live with that philosophy. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, "He has also set eternity in the human heart..." We were created to long for more. I love the way Blaise Pascal words this, "There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus." Even better is C.S. Lewis's, "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."
So how do we live here on the horizon of eternity? How do we live as we watch ourselves die?
"Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though the outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day." 2 Corinthians 4:16 NKJV
It's all about perspective. The rest of this verse spells it out clearly: "...we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things that are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."
You see, there's no doubt about it--our outward man is perishing. We can see that every day. But there's more to us than bodies. There is a reality that is unseen but more real than this one. One that that we are daily being prepared for. The question is are we ready for it?
