11- About Ignorance and Death

Part 11 in the series, God, the Love Story Autumn

The last time you came to visit, surprisingly, Abraham, the Father of a multitude, appeared on my path to Christmas. He had asked me what the death was that I was so afraid of, the fear of which kept me walking on these painful pebbles mile after mile and day after day till I could reach the Christ-child to ask for immortality. 

“Why Father Abraham, everyone knows that death is a deep darkness of nothingness, a kind of sleep without dreams, a state of non-being. I don’t want that to happen to me. I want to sing and eat delectable foods forever. I want to see God! Look at yourself immortal Abraham, standing here millennia after your own bumpy trek through life on earth. I want to be alive like you!” 

Abraham did not reply right away. Instead he lowered his head in deep thought before finally speaking, “You should know my child that the world of nothingness you just described does not exist. You fear a lie.”

I was alarmed and toppled by these words. Abraham went on to explain, “Bodilessness is not deep dark nothingness. Do you remember in the Gospel the scene when Peter cut off the ear of the soldier who had come to arrest Jesus, and instead of gratitude, Jesus became angry with Peter and restored his ear to the man? Be careful to avoid human logic!”

“What does logic have to do with death?”I cried.

Abraham patiently replied, “On that day Peter learned that the logic of God is logic that doesn’t fight against death but overcomes it entirely. The logic that says that a body lies in a state of nothingness after losing the electricity of thought and the mechanics of respiration and digestion is the logic of man, not the logic of God.”

“To live immortally one must cling to the source of life which is our God. So light filled and intelligent is He that God illuminates the world of those closest to Him. People who sit in human darkness are as ignorant and blind as a man in a cave. Death is distance to God nothing more, nothing less.”

“My child you will never gain spiritual sight by looking for it. Seek only to be as near to God’s light and life as you can possibly get. The commands will help only if you understand that they bring you close to the light. Cling to that light and your spirit will see what mortals cannot. Think on these things. I will teach you no more. For you have others to show you the rest of the way to Christmas and they are waiting for you. Be gone.”