Swallowed up by life!

I have this Bible app on my phone, which I use as a kind of daily devotional.  Except that lately I’ve allowed things going on in my life to sort of keep me from the ‘daily’ thing.

Busy-ness and business, defeats and distresses – the stuff that we sometimes call ‘LIFE’ – had crept in and robbed me of my routine and pushed my time alone with my Bible app to the bottom of my priority list.  And in the process, it had also kind of eroded my overall sense of peace/contentment/joy (circle one or circle all) in my life.

So I’ve been kind of walking around in a bog.  Not reading, not meditating, not writing…just plodding along.

But since it’s a Monday morning and I was fresh off a good ‘challenging’ message in church on Sunday (amid a series of reminders to Get Fit), I was bound and determined to get back into the swing of a premeditated daily moment with my phone – and not the Sudoku app.

Before I move past this gushing over a phone application for the Bible, I want to clearly state that I think Bible apps for smart phones are the GREATEST invention ever.  I know some people scoff at this and say that there is nothing like holding a real Bible in your hands and turning the pages while absorbing the truths of God’s written Word. To those people, I say, “Whatever!”

What device represents communication today more completely than a smart phone?  We talk to people on it, we FaceTime them, we text them, email them, etc.   And what is God’s prime method of communication to the people of earth?  The Bible.  I believe Bible apps and smart phones were made for each other and…dare I say…divinely inspired!

So I open up the app this morning and a passage from 2 Corinthians 5 popped up as the reading for the day.  It was the passage from verses 11-15 that includes the instruction that “those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”

That was a good and timely reminder for me and I would’ve been well-armed to go through my day with the memo that I’m not living for myself and my selfish inclinations.  But when a passage starts with the word ‘since’, my obsessive nature wants to find the back story and find out, ‘since what?’

So I tapped on the phone to expand the passage and began reading a somewhat familiar passage to me:

“We know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands…” (2 Corinthians 5:1)

It’s primarily a passage that talks about what believers can expect after this life is done.  So, while I was gaining context for the original passage I read, I wasn’t particularly thinking that this part of the chapter was going to add anything to my armure du jour.

BUT THEN…

Almost accidentally, I stumbled across a phrase at the end of verse 4 that, for whatever reason, had never stuck with me before.

“For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” (2 Corinthians 5:4)

It was that final phrase – ‘swallowed up by life’ – that grabbed my attention.

Here’s the deal:  when people notice that I’m emotionally down about something, and they care enough to ask me about it, my response is that the problem is that ‘LIFE is getting me down’.  You know, ‘life’, otherwise known as the everyday stuff that we mortals deal with.

But in this phrase, it hit that the stuff that gets me down isn’t the stuff of LIFE at all…it’s the stuff of mortality.  Sure, that may seem like splitting hairs or a matter of semantics, but right there in 2 Corinthians 5:4, the Bible clearly differentiates between this mortal existence and LIFE.

LIFE is the ultimate victory…the biggest W of them all.  Being swallowed up by life isn’t the ultimate defeat, it’s like winning the Super Bowl of Being.

Now, again…I know the context of this passage is referring to what happens to those who have stepped across the line of faith after this mortality ends.  But I also know that once you step across that line, you’re not waiting for the eternal life ‘game’ to begin sometime down the road…you’re already in the game!

So I decided that, since it is true that ‘what is mortal (will) be (ultimately) swallowed up by LIFE’ and that I already have received that LIFE, I can already begin living like I’ve been swallowed up by life.

I’ve been plodding along thinking life is getting me down…when the exact opposite is true.  If I embrace the life that I possess, then the stuff of mortality that tries to weigh me down can’t win.

• Money is tight… so what?  The need for money is ultimately going to be swallowed up by life!
• Nothing seems to be going right… so what?  The wrongs are ultimately going to be swallowed up by life!
• I can’t seem to get a break right now… so what?  I’m ultimately going to be swallowed up by life!
• I’m surrounded by idiots…so what?   I’m ultimately going to be swallowed up by life!
• Times are tough…so what?  They’re ultimately going to be swallowed up by life!

I know that these types of problems are real and have to be dealt with, not retreated from.  But the reality of knowing the outcome of all of these things actually gives me the strength to keep confronting them on a daily basis.  No matter how bad or hopeless any situation appears to be to me, I have the reassurance that, in the end, the hopelessness and bad times are eventually going be lost in the vast endlessness of LIFE.  In the end, I win.

So since I know that one day – hopefully at least 30-40 years from now – my mortality will be swallowed up by life, I’ve decided I’m going to try to start living every day like LIFE has already swallowed me up.

Put a ‘W’ in the results column for today.  Winner!