23 November 2013 - even now

23 November 2013 - even now

he is not God of the dead, but of the living,

God lives.  He lives now.  He lives now even for the childless widow who loses seven husbands.  He lives to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at every point in their lives, even the difficult ones.  Even when Abraham is called to lay down Isaac's life, and therefore all the promises and hope he has from God, even then God lives to him. 

God lives to Israel even when King Antiochus is still in charge.  Even when he sets up the Abomination upon the alter in Jerusalem the Most High lives.  God lives to Israel even when it is pillaged of its "vessels of gold and silver" and when "the inhabitants of Judah be destroyed."

What does it mean that he lives in these times?  How is that consolation for us?  How is it hope? 

It may seem at first to be the opposite of hope.  It may seem that if God is so present in dark times that he must not care about them.  What kind of God can fully know these sufferings and not act?

the dead will rise

God is present in these changing circumstances precisely to allow us to pass from them to that which is eternal and unchanging.  This isn't just a gift he gives.  He alone endures.  Even his gifts pass away.

If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.  For we know partially and we prophesy partially, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

Again, he alone endures.

That is why "those who are deemed worth to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead" "are the children of God".  They participate in the very life of God.  They share in his divine nature (cf. 2 Pet. 1:4).  It is precisely in this way that "they are like angels".  Though wings would also be cool.

We need to open ourselves fully to the one who lives even now at this very moment.  He lives right now no matter what we face.  If we neglect his presence and do our own thing we will find ourselves lamenting our lives as King Antiochus does:

I know that this is why these evils have overtaken me;
and now I am dying, in bitter grief, in a foreign land.”

Ultimately the "nations are sunk in the pit they have made".  A pit is an absence.  They sink because the truly real is in God and they neglect it.  This is "the snare they set" themselves in which "their foot is caught."

But if we turn to God we have great cause to rejoice in his salvation.

I will give thanks to you, O LORD, with all my heart;
I will declare all your wondrous deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you;
I will sing praise to your name, Most High.

There is nothing our enemies can do against the eternal one.  Sin and death appear insubstantial in his presence.  They dissolve like dew in the sun.