To Be Born--or to Rise Again…

Here we are alive, on a planet suspended in space—a beautiful and wondrous one, with sunrise and sunset, and seedtime and harvest, and the changing seasons; and all that grows, and all that moves and man and his searching mind, and the power to learn, and the love of loved ones, and all the evidence of the planning of Providence.
Perhaps some would suppose that the most natural thing is nothing. How did anything—or anyone—ever come to be in the first place? When was there a beginning of anything at all? “Who wound up the Universe?” is one of the classic questions. Who organized it—and who keeps it in its course?
You see, we live in the midst of miracles. We see them at our very side. The first flower of spring is a miracle, the first bud that breaks winter’s death and dormancy.
Birth itself is a miracle—the awesome, sobering miracle of the newborn babe—with hands reaching, with eyes watching, with ears listening, and intelligence that responds to truth. The fact that we live, that we are, that we think and learn and love—all this is a miracle and a mystery.
Who gave instinct to animals? Who gave the body wisdom to heal itself? Who gave two cells that intelligence to join and divide, to become an eye or a tooth, or the hair of the head?
We recall the oft-quoted question of Pascal: “Which is the more difficult, to be born, or to rise again?” Surely immortality is no more a miracle than mortality is. And the Lord God who gave us life here, can give us life everlasting. To the believer there is the blessing of believing, even of knowing, beyond belief. To the doubter, let it be said, he cannot know that the believer does not know. With Job we would witness with a certainty of assurance: “…I know that my redeemer liveth. And to those who search and seek, to those who sorrow, to those who are fearful and frustrated, to those who wonder, and those who weary along the way, this is the certainty–this is the assurance of our Savior: that for us and for all men, including loved ones who now seem lost, He did come forth from death to life; He did redeem us all from death.