O, What Blabbery!

Your grace is sooo amazing it always makes up for my flaws and my failures--at times, it even covers up my mistakes, and, to my shame, cleans after my mess. Your grace is sooo great it always overpowers my doubts--yes, it negates my misgivings. Who am I that you think of me this way? What have I done that you care for me so dearly? Where I fall short, there you always are to complete. Where I am rendered deficient, there you always are to compensate.

Thank. You. So. Much.

...oh, I just can't thank you enough!

From this day on, I want to spend more of my time and my effort focusing on your impregnable, unending perfection, and less getting anxious over my sheer, seemingly unending imperfection. There's just no use crying over spilled milk anymore--I don't even like milk.

Hate me forever for saying this, but frankly, I'm starting this blog just because I find this template really cool and, well, grungy ...never mind the typos, choy sya diba? I know you agree... I mean, just look at the inlay, astig au na bai! It's so appealing it would be a complete waste of space if I don't come up with something to complement the aesthetics with.

Brainstorm.

Initiating artsy fartsy mode... Hmmm, the template...it's wild, and uhmm, abstract... What would suit a wild and abstract backdrop? Uhmmm...TAMA! Hogwash, gibberish, and what not... Utter blabber. Yawyaw lang gud! That should fit just right...

Well then, blabbery it is!



Necrology

Death.

Oh how it ends something, and yet spurs something else at the same time.

It flashes the red light on all your bodily systems--your respiration, your digestion, your blood's circulation, and other biomechanical and biochemical machines running while you're still breathing. It permanently terminates all your thought and perceptive processes as well--all your memories, your reasoning, your reckoning, your dreams--or so they say. Briefly put, it stops you from living.

BUT even if you're dead as a Dodo, death does start something else all the while--the decomposition of your tissues, the scavenging of bacteria upon your flesh, or even vultures overhead, that is if you died on the Sahara. It spurs as well the sorrow of your beloved and your bereaved, or at least, the shock of those you've shared even a minute percentage of your earthly time with. It may even spur the delight of your be-hated.

Death is both an end and a beginning. As cliche as that may sound, death is by essence both an exit and an entry at the same time, the thought of which brings me to what a learned guy named Paul wrote in one of his most controversial letters to a group of fickle-minded Celtic minority,

"I have been crucified with Christ
and I no longer live,
but Christ lives in me.
The life I live in the body,
I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave Himself for me."
Galatians 2.20, NIV

If there's someone who could convincingly write a thesis on death and dying, I'd say it has to be Paul. Yes, it has to be him, for two reasons.

Firstly, he was an inflictor of death, a murderer. One way or another, he was responsible for the deaths of those who followed Christ. For instance, he was the head honcho in stoning the life out of poor Stephen. Who knows how many other Christ-followers died in his hands?

Secondly, he was a victim of death himself, or at least, a survivor of it. If there's someone who came near death close enough (yet lived) to tell about it, that would be Paul. Were he to live today, he could have been most qualified to be called an expert on NDE's (Near Death Experiences). As one of the most radical Christ-followers a couple of millenia ago--as radical as he was when he massacred Steve & Co.--he later on became one of those whom he victimized in the first place. Through the torture, suffering and NDE's he went through as a radical believer, it's safe to assume that he had grown so familiar with death. He was so familiar with it that he even exclaimed HE NO LONGER LIVES as if he'd already become some ghastly figment of the afterlife.

But here, our man Paul was serious in telling them, "Hey guys, I am dead. This is a dead man writing you." And he did that not just to scare the hell out of the double-minded Galatians from believing the Paul-/Peter-wannabe's who had been sprouting out of nowhere that time. I believe he meant something even more delicate, a matter of life and death so to speak.



Someone More Credible

"Hey guys, I am dead. This is a dead man writing you." That's Paul saying he's dead, not just because he's gone near death many times, but because somebody else is living his life for him--CHRIST, someone with even more cred to talk about death.

Come to think of it, Christ has even more to say about the subject matter than Paul since Christ has not merely gotten NEAR DEATH. Christ has gotten THROUGH DEATH.

"...and gave Himself for me", oh what security Paul might have felt, knowing that his master Christ didn't merely got through death for nothing, but that Christ got through death FOR HIM. For him to live. And not just live, but live it to the full. And Paul did live his life to the full, sooo full to the brim it spilled out. Hence the conclusion, "I no longer live but Christ in me".

Imagine a bucket filled to the brim with stagnant, soapy water, all cloudy from spills while you bathed the other night, all dirtied from lint off your body. If you want your water clean again, you can't just turn the faucet on right away and wait for the dirt to spill out as it fills. You have to pour out the polluted content all the way down the drain first, only then shall you twist the tap for a nice clean refill, now clear and limpid and ready to rinse with.


Death = Life to the Full

It's not that complex of an analogy but I believe that was the kind of death Paul was talking about: to pour out what he so embraced as his life, all muddled by religion, worldly philosophy and mere human err, then to refill it with Christ's life which Christ so willingly gave up for him on the cross, a life lived for the glory of the Father, and for the advancement of the Kingdom.

I believe it's the same call for us today. A call to death. A call to spill out and displace what we've known and enjoyed as our own lives, all dirtied by worldly pleasure, and in exchange, fill it up with the cleaner, purer, hence FULLER life in Christ.

Yes, it's inevitable that one of these days, we'd have to get inside one of them custom-fit caskets then decay in land our moms bought with that fine insurance deal. However, before various florae feast on our corpse, we have to die in the same manner Paul died even while he was living--that is, being crucified with Christ, thus dying to our flesh, our sinful desires.

With such death, we avoid a worse kind of death, a death even deadlier than that when we decompose-->death that is in absence of Him, death that does not end at all. Eternal suffering. Endless torment. A life in hell.

On the other hand, we're also assured of life in the presence of Him, life that does not end at all. Eternal life. Endless joy. A life in the Kingdom.

Wanna live life to the full eh? Try dying.