Beauty in Dying

I've been thinking all week about this question: "Are you living to die, or dying to live?" I've been sorting through my thoughts and goals and trying very hard to answer this deep and life changing question. Do I care more about my wants, my comforts, my pleasures, or do I care more about One who is higher? Dying doesn't sound like much fun was my brilliant conclusion. And as my husband says the odds are against me...100% of people die, so I'm not going to get out of it! So is death all that bad?



Today God is showing me the beauty of dying. Doesn't sound like that beautiful of a process...but God is changing my understanding. As I looked at the weather forecast today I got so excited. One of my favorite seasons is here and finally the forecast is agreeing! Fall is here! Oh that is wonderful news to me because I endure summer more than I enjoy it! Fall is such a beautiful time of year, and yet its the dying that makes it beautiful. How can something so beautiful like the changing of leaves and then ultimately the falling of them really just be the process of dying? Death! Death is beautiful!



So let's get on with it! It's going to happen...you and I can't get out of it. If it is in God's way it will be one of the most beautiful and literally breath-taking processes we could ever imagine. If I die now, if I deny myself and live through HIM I can rest knowing that my life will be more beautiful, more refreshing, and most importantly that I pleased the ONE who put the breath in my lungs in the 1st place. So to quote an old dead guy who died way before the breath left his lungs and now I'm sure is quite alive.... "Resolution 1: I will live for God / Resolution 2: If no one else does, I still will. (Jonathan Edwards)



Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with HIM, we will also live with HIM 2 Timothy 2:11 (Paul, another old dead guy who is living in a way I can't even imagine at this moment)



Don't you just love what the dead are trying to tell us...get on with it, die to yourself, live for something worth living for! My prayer is that I would get on with dying and therefore on with the living!

7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 3:7-11