Eternal, not immortal

Life is a process. You know this. Things don’t just miraculously poof out of thin air like some hocus pocus trick. There is time, yes time, which has its hand in the entire operation from the least of things to the greatest of things. With time comes the natural effects of living in a biosphere where the cycle follows a predictable path from beginning to end. Here is Jesus’s take on the matter:

Joh 12:24-25 “Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. (25) In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.

Everything begins as a seed. That seed must die in order to produce what will be the witness of life, then ultimately become the next generation of fruit and the seeds which continue the cycle. Death produces life.

There resided within the psyche of humanity the willingness to believe in the possibility of being able to live forever. It matters not what culture you come from there is somewhere within its heritage the remote myth of some character representing humanity who having traveled a long harrowing journey filled with a multitude of divine tests and trials captures the golden prize of immortality. Even today, there are many in the religious environs of the west who believe how the story of Jesus, they’re belief in him and his finished works, makes them immortal.

If you, like me, are human, you are mortal. Our life is conducted within the environs of this biosphere with all its constraints. To put it bluntly, from dust we came and to dust we shall return. Immortality is mere fiction, a long sought-after wish of a super-hero in this regard. However…

There is a generation that shall live and not die according to the writings of Paul to the church in Corinth. Upon the return of the Christ, Paul conditions this generations existence not in their mortal form but in a change, which will occur in the twinkling of an eye, where they will become as the Christ is. Recognize that this is for a singularly specific generation, not all generations. The prior remaining generations don’t receive this benefit of not dying simply because they are mortal. However…

The Creator resides in dimension beyond the limits of time as we know and experience it. It is an eternal realm knowing no beginning or end, a perpetual state of Now. We, you and I, plus the person next to you, all at one point resided in this very same domain, being “…in Him before the foundations of the world.” Eternal we have been, still are, and forever will be. The meat sack you occupy will cycle through the processes of youth, maturity, adulthood, to seniority and then death, the final state of all organic matter on this planet. However, you – whatever this means – the consciousness which arises from being, is alive in an eternal Now dimension. Notice how eternal life comes to us on this tiny rock in space.

Joh 17:1-3 Jesus said these things. Then, raising his eyes in prayer, he said: Father, it’s time. Display the bright splendor of your Son so the Son in turn may show your bright splendor. (2) You put him in charge of everything human so he might give real and eternal life to all in his charge. (3) And this is the real and eternal life: That they know you, The one and only true God, And Jesus Christ, whom you sent.

All you need to do is know the Father, and Jesus, in order to have eternal life. But aren’t we already eternal? Yes, but we have been chasing dreams of being immortal for far too long. We need to RE-member ourselves in Him. Knowing is union, a coupling bringing two into one. Put whatever overtones you want onto this description and it still won’t diminish the effect it RE-creates. This is reckless love. This is your life as an eternal.