Before life

In all honesty, today I could not escape death. The people involved are godly people of immense faith and their eternal rest is without any shadow of doubt. When the time comes they will be with their maker joining with the heavenly chorus in singing the praise of God.

But before that, before they get to join that throng of praise, they must die. For in the eternal sense, death comes before life. And that is painful and it hearts and it brings a whole raft of emotions with it but as Christians we believe in that wondrous gift of eternal life given by the resurrection of Christ on that first Easter day.

Which led me to two clear thoughts. The first – that in order to be raised from the dead and thus defeat death, Christ first had to die. Death had to come before life. The second thought took me back to my Ash Wednesday thinking, that I could understand my need for forgiveness and that fact that I live the life of a forgiven man. And I am forgiven by Christ’s death on the cross. Before my forgiveness there came death.

If I live the constant life of resurrection in an every day Easter day then I run the very real risk of forgetting the cross. And that brings with it a twofold danger. That I forget the forgiveness that was bought by the cross and that I forget that before eternal life must come death.

To ensure that I never forget these two essential steps  on the journey I must lay aside the constant joy of Easter and embrace the journey of Lent. A journey that will first take me to the cross before I once more embrace the risen Lord.

And so I return to Ash Wednesday, now a week and a day late. I remember the words of that service whereby I recall my own mortality and the need for forgiveness and I journey to the cross, knowing that in death there is life.