If Resurrection Is A Life Beyond Death What Is It?

A few days ago Zac Smith passed away. I never knew him accept through a video that was posted online three months ago. You can watch it below.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9796056&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
The Story of Zac Smith from NewSpring Media on Vimeo.

Albert Camus once said, “It’s no use reminding yourself daily that you are mortal: it will be brought home to you soon enough.”

This year my own mortality has been driven home quite a bit. It seems not a day does by where I am not reminded in one way or another. In the last year I have lost several friends to cancer, all not much older then me. Another friend recently died in a car accident, and one of closest childhood friends passed unexpectedly from a stomach flu.

I am also expecting my first child.

I am in a strange place between birth and death, we all are. This is the country of Mortality. Mortality is a country none of us feel quite at home in. Christians belive that we are not natives to Mortality, but slaves. Death is something that isn’t intended by God, but has taken over the world.

This is something that is very hard for me to understand, but it seems right to me in many ways. I feel split.

On the one hand…

Something in me longs for a life free from death. I feel sure that there is something seriously wrong with the world because of death. I have an ache in me for a life that is eternally significant.

On the other hand…
I look around me and the pattern is the same:

someone is born —–> then they die
someone is born —–> then they die
someone is born —–> then they die
someone is born —–> then they die

I have to conclude…

Part of who I am is in conflict with the world….

Some people might argue that that conflict is built into my DNA to always make me figure out how to preserve myself; a kind of evolutionary mechanism to make sure I keep myself alive.

Those people are partly right. This is also why we spend so much time and money on medical research and healthcare. We are so afraid of death.

However that only addresses part of the issue… I feel I am hungry for something beyond this world. I have this deep down feeling in my gut that there is something much more beautiful out there then anything I see here.

I am not longing to simply live longer in the country of mortality I am seeking a a return to my country of origin and that is something completely different.

No matter how good your lifestyle here is, no matter how great our heath care becomes, no matter how many years you add; we all die.

Even if a faith healer were to raise someone from the dead they would still be mortal, and eventually succumb to some other ailment or misfortune. As long as we dwell in the land of Mortality all are efforts simply postpone the unavoidable.

All we can hope to accomplish in this land is Resuscitation, but Jesus belongs to another kingdom, one in which there is Resurrection.

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live (John 11:25).”

If Resurrection is a life beyond death what is it?