Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Greetings, dear ones…

New day, new week, new challenges, with His mercies new every morning. I’ve spent a good deal of time with a tech support person from Verizon Wireless. While on the phone, the little kittens were playing climbing up and down my legs—and I began smelling the strong odor of dog. I wondered, since when did the kittens emit that smell? I had left the door open to the outside and now realized that Hondo had snuck in without me knowing and was laying on the floor at my feet under my desk.

Now I need to get on with other stuff. Have a great time getting on with your stuff.

Love, Dad/Ray.

All of us on this side of the grave have to ponder what it is like on the other side of the grave. There are those, of course, like the Sadducees, who choose to believe there is only nothingness after death. Nothingness? Really? Says who? Certainly not Jesus!—the One Who knows. And we will never find a more matter-of-fact confirmation of living conscious existence after death than right here when Jesus speaks to that erroneous notion posed by the Sadducees—“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive” (20:38).

Some fresh inspiration is flowing from this reading of Jesus’ description of that heavenly state when He says, “They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection” (20:36). Back up a little and be reminded of the hypothetical situation that those guys put to Jesus—regarding seven brothers who in consecutive order had the same wife with no resulting children—“at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?” (20:33). The first point Jesus makes is that there is no sex up there!—no making babies by that means in that setting! That standard of procreation is reserved for this earthly dimension. And I have cause to wonder how anyone in their right mind who has ever participated in this earthly phenomenon does not clearly recognize that it is most definitely A GOD THING. HE IS THE AUTHOR OF LIFE AND THE REPRODUCTION THEREOF. He is the One Who has designed this marvelous miracle of gender attraction and intercourse that causes molecules and living cells to knit together to form a separate unique living person. In that sense, Sovereign Creator God is indeed the Father of us all. How much more is this true in the resurrection—involving the re-gathering and assembling of all those same molecules to make those same living cells to form the very same living person—SEXLESS RE-REPRODUCTION! Wow!

I have to confess that I’m not smart enough to get all this stuff figured out to the point of perfect understanding—along with perfect anticipation. But I’m sure thankful and relieved to believe He does—He has it all perfectly figured out. In fact, how could it be otherwise if He’s the Maker and Designer of it all? My concluding bottom line: A trusting, serving, worshiping HEART AFTER GOD right here and now where I live this side of my grave.