As I watch lemony yellow leaves flutter from our magnificent cottonwood tree while a light breeze shakes its aging leaves, words I seem to remember reading in the past float through my mind. "IN DEATH I LIVE." Was it a quote from Lilias Trotter? A remnant of the verse, "Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him" (Romans 6:8)? As I ponder these words, I think of the deaths I have experienced.
My life has seen its share of death. I have been by the blessed bedsides of dear family members as they were lifted out of their used-up bodies into the arms of Jesus. I count these experiences of watching a LIFE TRANSFORMED from a broken world into the awesome presence of our loving Creator as some of my most precious gifts.
Another kind of death I have experienced is the death of dreams. While painful at the time, these experiences too I count as gifts. As I have been compelled to give up personal plans for my life, I HAVE RECIEVED SOMETHING SO MUCH BETTER - the perfect will of God in my life. In the death of my plans, I have received the peace of knowing that the One who loves me beyond comprehension and knows what the future holds orders my days.
There is another death that has brought life that I have been blessed beyond blessed to experience. "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; BUT IF IT DIES, IT BEARS MUCH FRUIT" (John 12:23, emphasis added). Just as Jesus died and rose again in order to raise many more to eternal life, so I too, because of His substitutionary death, have died and risen again in a spiritual sense. On the day many years ago that I repented of my sin (sin is the lasting death which brings no life in its wake) and accepted the love of God, Jesus raised my soul out of the groveling pit of sin to eternal life. The life I now have is fruitful as I surrender my faulty human will to His perfect will. Yes, it is a death of sorts to give up my own will. But just as the death of a flower is what leads to abundance of life through its seed or as the death of the leaves of my giant cottonwood provides life giving nutrients to future plants through their decomposition, so my surrendered life can now produce the fruit for which it was originally made. Praise God for this death to eternal death that leads to life, a life of fruitfulness and multiplication in the Kingdom of God! And this life isn't such a bad deal for me either. While I will experience pain and loss on earth, I know that these troubles are light and momentary in comparison with the eternal glory of heaven (see Romans 8:18).
In her book, Parables of the Cross, Lilias Trotter wrote these words beside her detailed painting of a bed of lush and colorful moss atop a decomposing mound of brown plant matter. "This bit of sphagnum shows the process in miniature: stage after stage of dying has been gone through, and each has been all the while crowned with life... YES, LIFE IS THE UPPERMOST, resurrection life, radiant and joyful and strong, for we represent down here Him who liveth and was dead and is alive for evermore" (Lilias Trotter, "Parables of the Cross", emphasis added).
My life has seen its share of death. I have been by the blessed bedsides of dear family members as they were lifted out of their used-up bodies into the arms of Jesus. I count these experiences of watching a LIFE TRANSFORMED from a broken world into the awesome presence of our loving Creator as some of my most precious gifts.
Another kind of death I have experienced is the death of dreams. While painful at the time, these experiences too I count as gifts. As I have been compelled to give up personal plans for my life, I HAVE RECIEVED SOMETHING SO MUCH BETTER - the perfect will of God in my life. In the death of my plans, I have received the peace of knowing that the One who loves me beyond comprehension and knows what the future holds orders my days.
There is another death that has brought life that I have been blessed beyond blessed to experience. "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; BUT IF IT DIES, IT BEARS MUCH FRUIT" (John 12:23, emphasis added). Just as Jesus died and rose again in order to raise many more to eternal life, so I too, because of His substitutionary death, have died and risen again in a spiritual sense. On the day many years ago that I repented of my sin (sin is the lasting death which brings no life in its wake) and accepted the love of God, Jesus raised my soul out of the groveling pit of sin to eternal life. The life I now have is fruitful as I surrender my faulty human will to His perfect will. Yes, it is a death of sorts to give up my own will. But just as the death of a flower is what leads to abundance of life through its seed or as the death of the leaves of my giant cottonwood provides life giving nutrients to future plants through their decomposition, so my surrendered life can now produce the fruit for which it was originally made. Praise God for this death to eternal death that leads to life, a life of fruitfulness and multiplication in the Kingdom of God! And this life isn't such a bad deal for me either. While I will experience pain and loss on earth, I know that these troubles are light and momentary in comparison with the eternal glory of heaven (see Romans 8:18).
In her book, Parables of the Cross, Lilias Trotter wrote these words beside her detailed painting of a bed of lush and colorful moss atop a decomposing mound of brown plant matter. "This bit of sphagnum shows the process in miniature: stage after stage of dying has been gone through, and each has been all the while crowned with life... YES, LIFE IS THE UPPERMOST, resurrection life, radiant and joyful and strong, for we represent down here Him who liveth and was dead and is alive for evermore" (Lilias Trotter, "Parables of the Cross", emphasis added).
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