Daily Devotion • February 18
Today's Scripture
1 Corinthians 15:35–38, 42–50
But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.
...
So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.
What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. (NRSV)
Reflection
Apostle Paul addresses our resurrection when writing to Christian Corinthians. He employs a metaphor familiar to any gardener: When a seed is sown, a new plant grows, thanks to God. And when we die and decay, Paul maintains God graces our resurrected body with God’s glory, and our natural body becomes our spiritual soul.
When pondering resurrection, I invariably turn to the lyrics of “How Glory Goes” from the musical Floyd Collins by Adam Guettel. It relates the century-old true story of a Kentucky cave explorer trapped for over two weeks in a sand cave. He sings this plaintive song about life after death as he’s dying. He prefaces it by saying, “I’m ready now, Lord. I know I weren’t no Sunday school momma’s boy. But faith is hoping for somethin’, believin’ what you can’t see.”
Is it warm? Is it soft against your face? Do you feel a kind of grace inside the breeze?
Will there be trees? Is there light? Does it hover on the ground?
Does it shine from all around or just from you?
Is it endless and empty and you wander on your own?
Slowly forget about the folks that you have known.
Or does risin’ bread fill up the air from open kitchens everywhere?
Familiar faces far as you can see, like a family?
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Will I want, will I wish for all the things I should’a done?
Longin’ to finish what I only just begun.
Or has a shinin’ truth been waitin’ there for all the questions ev’rywhere?
In a world of wonderin’, suddenly you know. And you will always know.
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Only Heaven knows how glory goes. What each of us was meant to be.
In the starlight, that is what we are. I can see so far.
Listen here to it sung by its composer, Broadway star Kelli O’Hara.
Prayer
O, Lord, help us grasp that in Christ and lying within us we can grow into life that our death cannot end. Amen.
Written by Tim Schellhardt, Member of Fourth Presbyterian Church
Reflection and Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church
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