RMC #30- On Life
Posted in Mountains, RMC on July 17th, 2007On Life
I have not been writing much for the Rocky Mountain Climbing Diary lately. I can blame the move, the lack of time to concentrate to meditate and allow God to enter my thoughts and for those thoughts to generate writing.
I feel a little cut adrift from many of my sources of inspiration: my church, my Emmaus group, teaching Disciple bible cases, attending Choices Stretches and more. So far we have not connected spiritually with a fellowship or church. I met a really neat couple on the plane to Miami last week and they knew a few people in Vail Valley who were churchgoers and they are getting us together. I am hopeful this will lead to new God adventures and guidance.
I have been doing a fair amount of reading to “make up” for this obvious lack in my life right now. This has been really wonderful for when I am absorbed in Christ oriented material I am ported away to a better life only available through belief and faith.
But I am not unhappy. I look out the window of my house and see the mountains that so attracted me for so long and I shake in disbelief that I am actually living here. Then in the cool of the nights I can look up and see an uncountable number of stars and then I know for sure that God put me here to experience just that feeling. What He still has in store for me I am unsure, but His pace is allowing me to get my household and business in shape for His next challenge.
One thought has been running through my mind for a month or two. I was able to share it with my good friend Kevin Henderson on a drive to Denver we did together.
My thoughts we about life.
These thoughts were made clearer upon the death of Melinda Shipman, a friend of ours for the last few years who took our Disciple bible classes. You may recall that Suzy and I were asked to speak at her memorial service.
I am so sure that Melinda is in heaven now that it has given me a different perspective of life. Since I believe the Bible tells me that death leads to eternal life for those that believe, then Melinda is only dead to us. We can no longer see the shell she inhabited here on this level of God’s creation. Melinda always exuded a grace that I have seen in few people. Her radiance, here, was always very clear to me. I have a clear vision that as believers, as we die, which is the only definition we have for our brains to understand, as we leave the shell God has given us, we change to God’s vision of us and it is radiant. This radiance is so bright that we mere mortals can not see the transformation and the ascendance.
I even think this belief is Biblical. When Moses came down from the mountain after being with God it was said his face shone with such radiance that he went a long time with his head covered. Jesus upon his transfiguration and Stephen speaking to the Sanhedrin prior to his stoning were also examples of God’s radiance being experienced by man.
I wish we had a different way to express this transformation; unfortunately I have no idea how to do so. But I think I know life better as a result of this understanding. Life really isn’t here. Life really only truly begins in faith and death. In faith we become a little like God. In death we move even closer to God though our faith. Time is no longer of any importance. If we wish to know more about the rings of Saturn, we go there and become a ring. For as part of God’s glory and universe we can see all that He has made. When I thought of this capability we will receive upon our faith, death, transformation and ascendance, I finally understood Mark, Chapter 10, Verses 28-31, that our new self will receive “A hundred-fold” what we experienced on this world.
Now, as much as my heart still aches for Melinda and all of the other dear friends and family who have radiantly ascended to be at the hand of God, I am less tearful and more filled with joy for their crossing into the next realm of everlasting forgiveness and beauty. And, where God will wipe away every tear.
And maybe that is what I am to write about.
