Post Time

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Do you ever wonder what it is like to be dead?

I know I am not alone in wondering given the popularity of so many books written by people who have had near death or death experiences.  Too bad we don't have any first hand accounts in the Bible of those raise from the dead, like Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus.

They would have been able to tell us if there is anything between this life and the final resurrection at the end time.

For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. - Matthew 22:30

When it comes to death, we Christians seem to have a lot of different views, and that isn't surprising, since none of us have been there and come back.  And even if we had, would we know for sure what we experienced in death?

In today's reading, the question posed to Jesus was an attempt to trick him into blasphemy, so we need to take the answer with as much salt as a response appropriate to the question would allow.

But we get a glimpse of an existence after this that we might not expect.  Jesus tells the Pharisees that we are like the angels.

So our heavenly bodies might not be the same as our physical earthly bodies, and for me that is good news.

I am not too sure I will want to hold onto this body in the afterlife.  Oh, don't get me wrong, it has served me well, despite the aches and and pains that have become more common as I age.

But it would be nice to know that the work of feeding, dieting, exercise, dressing, showering, is left behind when I move on.

Yes, there are people who have abandoned some of those things in this life, but that's a different story.  I mean it would be nice to have a new form that doesn't require maintenance at all.

Of course, without all these needs, what would I spend my time doing?

That might be a trick question, since time is relative, as Einstein would say.  In the afterlife, we might find ourselves timeless, or at least in post time, the place after time.

In our post time existence, what will not happen for generations already is, as is what has happened before we were. It could be that our spiritual bodies, our souls, or whatever we choose to call them, will be freely moving through what we on earth believe is time.

While none of this can be known for certain, having some picture of beings living on helps us deal with death, not so much our own, but of the ones we love who have passed.

We want them to be eternal.

They are in us, of course, but I find it quite reassuring to believe those moments when I feel the presence of one who passed are real, not imagined.

While I am time bound, they are free.  And someday, I will get to know what that freedom is like.

For now, though, I plod along, dealing with the aches and pains, knowing some day this too shall pass.

More to come...