Simple Words

He insisted that we call him Jim.  James Houston, the theologian who once studied the Bible with CS Lewis, asked about my life and how I had arrived at Regent College.  I gave him the short version which included that my former husband had left our family a few years earlier. 

He shook his head, looked down, and said, “My dear, you understand death, burial and resurrection.” 

I think that was the first time I heard DBR applied to our lives, not only to Lazarus’ and Jesus’. Beginning with our short conversation, I began to see life, death, burial and resurrection everywhere. I could see the pattern throughout our lives and dreams and relationships – repeated over and over - and in cultures, nations, the world, and creation.  It changed how I see the sad, slow changes in our forest and rumors of apocalypse.   

How fitting that our dear brother died last Sunday at the age of 103, just as we near our celebration of the resurrection, that of Jesus Christ. 

Death and destruction have been defeated.  A death destroyed death, and the world has never since been the same.  The end is neither chaos nor death.  It is resurrection!