This Easter, as with every Easter, I find myself in desperate need of resurrection, with the added metaphor of having had a stroke three months ago today. They tell me in three more months I’ll have an indication of, after having had my life pulled out from under me, how much of it I’m going to get back. So I’m living through a little scaled down version of the now and the not yet, the position of every believer. I’ve seen some resurrection, but have not yet arrived at the fullness of my recovery.
It is, to say the least, disconcerting to live in the the not yet portion of my stroke. To put it bluntly, my right arm doesn’t work right and I’m doing good to lift five pounds over me head. Right now I am living with the feeling of having no identity. I used to be a carpenter. Right now, true or not, that seems impossible to me and I look ahead not knowing what the future holds. Tomorrow I’m planning on going down to my shop and start by cleaning up. It’s pretty much in a time warp down there, frozen on January fourth. I don’t even know if I can handle sweeping, if the pressure of pushing the broom across the floor will be too much for my shoulder.
Yes, I know, I am a child of God. However I have just as much confidence in my ability to clean up my life as I have in my ability to clean up my shop. “Who will set me free from the body of this death.
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Hear we start a new paragraph, a new thought. Unlike not knowing what my recovery from my stroke will be like three months from now, I know though faith what my recovery will be like from my body of sin and death. Through faith, with the help and by the power of the Holy Spirit, I make my way through the now towards the fulfillment of the promise of the not yet. I live in the tension between death and life, moving toward life everlasting through faith that two thousand and some odd years ago the stone rolled away and an empty tomb was revealed.
Happy Easter.
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