Following up on the piece used for the devotion on the past two days, Alison says, "Let me try to unpack this difficult notion a little." So here is his unpacking of this stuff on death and resurrection and how we may be wrong about it all.
If God can raise someone from the death in the middle of human history, the very fact reveals that death, which up till this point had marked human history as simply something inevitable, part of what it is to be a human being, is not inevitable. That is, death is itself not simply a biological reality, but a human cultural reality marking all perception and a human cultural reality that is capable of being altered.
Could it be that such a 'culture' is a culture of life? By that I mean a culture that is not possessed by death and its many controls. Instead, we do not need to live as a people who know death better than life. Think about it. We spend more of our time being defined by what can kill us or who we can kill or how we can avoid death that we forget about the power we have been given to bring things to life - to rescue the broken - to lift up the ones being trampled - to heal the wounded - to call forth life even as death tries to play its games among us. I think this would be quite a creative culture. Presently, cultures live in fear of death. We are afraid to seek out the healing welfare of others because of the fear of putting in jeopardy our own lives and our own well-being. That, is living according to the power of death. As people who live within the power of resurrection, we are meant to rise up each day - break wind toward death - and reach across every form of death that rules within the culture and begin the reconciliation of all things.
Connection: So, how does it all start. How can I be someone from this culture of life - this alien culture - an alien being? Traditionally we say 'pick up our cross' - that is, pick up all the power death can throw at us and then - face it with life that will not let us go. I think that is called love.
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