Chapman: what destroys, redeems

Friday, September 2, 2011
    Commemoration of Martyrs of Papua New Guinea, 1942
Meditation:
    How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.
    —1 Corinthians 15:36 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The antithesis between life and death is not so stark for the Christian as it is for the atheist. Life is a process of becoming, and the moment of death is the transition from one life to another. Thus it is possible for the Christian to succumb to his own kind of death-wish, to seek that extreme of other-worldliness to which the faith has always been liable, especially in periods of stress and uncertainty. There may appear a marked preoccupation with death and a rejection of all temporal things. To say that this world is in a fallen state and that not too much value must be set upon it, is very far from the Manichaean error of supposing it to be evil throughout. The Christian hope finds ambivalence in death: that which destroys, also redeems.
    ... Raymond Chapman (b. 1924), The Ruined Tower, London: G. Bles, 1961, p. 132 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, my death is a gateway to You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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