since it is the new year, i shall talk about death.
two things come to mind when i think of death - one, the wait at a deserted train station on a winter's evening in arklow, ireland, for a train that i wasn't sure would come; two, the wait at a bus stop outside the clinic where i had just received my blood test results.
those were the two times where i really died in mind and heart. that there should be self-resurrection, that what was once dead should live again, is the bane of my existence. for i should have died and stayed dead, but zombie-like, my old nature insists on unnatural extensions to life and continues to drag its ugly body around. i would pray for execution again, except that the bruises from the last round of discipline are still tender, and fresh enough to inspire fear.
yet i miss the sweetness of death. death is cold, stark, relentless annihilation, and that complete erasure of self is a relief, a release. for it is when we are weak that Christ is strong in us, it is when we are nothing that Christ is all. and nothing beats the peace and joy of living a life in which Christ is all.
and so death it shall be. not death as a goal in itself, but death in order that Christ might be all, in order that the new creation might live.
God help me.
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