Experience Doesn't Make This Easier

Experience doesn't make this any easier and perhaps that's because we've lessened the meaning of our first death—everyone knows it's not final and unrelenting. If we don't like it, we don't have to continue, a personal resurrection of sorts. Like Christ, we choose to go to our deaths. We choose submission, an end of choice, an end of us, and the death of everything we love and cherish—all our ambitions, dreams, and plans. 

We die in imitation of Christ and in our dying, share his death. In sharing his death, we also share his resurrection—we don't stay underwater and, what's more, “Christ was raised from the dead and we know he cannot die again. Death has no power over him.” Through our death by water, we die to ourselves and allow Christ to kill what makes us “us” —the good alongside the bad. Through our resurrection, we take part in his resurrection and we know we cannot die again!

And so our experience doesn't make it easier. We didn't realize it would be necessary to use our experience to make our second death easier on ourselves and those around us. Those of us down here on earth know all about its and relentless nature. We have become “so attached to these bodies.” We're familiar and comfortable with them. This death—not our choice—kills what makes us “us” —our very self is under an indefensible attack, not from without but from within. Resurrection this time is a lot less certain and clearly must involve more than bursting up from the water soaking wet and gasping.


This is faith. Believing and living the belief that “Christ means everything to me in this life and when I die, I'll have even more.” Believing that, “I can't lose... alive, I'm Christ's messenger; dead, I'm his bounty.” Believing that what we want this time—a little longer here on earth—will take a backseat to what he wants this time as it has in the past. Because we have experience and experience makes it easier.