“You died, and your life is now hidden with Christ.”  Colossians 3

“In order for your new life to be born, your old one has to die.” 

The birth of my newest grandchild, Zoey, has me thinking a lot about life this week.  The name “Zoey” means life.  Looking at this little newborn is an awe-inspiring occasion of the miracle of life.  The perfectly formed little face, fingers, and other features.  Everything that she needs to grow into the adult person she will one day become. 

There was a daytime soap opera back in the day called “One Life to Live.”  Do you remember it by chance?  I was only a little kid, so I didn’t watch it.  Maybe my mom did.  I think the title is misleading.  I believe we have many lives to live.  We’re not cats, so we don’t have nine.  But at least five.

The first life is our biological life, when God knits us together in our mother’s wombs.  Think of what a miracle it is that you are alive!  The odds of that sperm and egg coming together to form you are astronomical!

The second life is our natural life. The one that happens when we are born and grow up and into the life that we will navigate for how many years we have this side of eternity.  That life will be shaped by the parents that we have, the culture we live in, the schools we attend, the friends we have, etc.  For many of us living in Western Culture we will be given the message that we “have to make something of our life,” so we will strive to become someone significant, achieve something notable, do some good things, make a lot of money, all that kind of stuff.  It’s a process of feeding what has been called our “false self” that caters to culture, others’ opinions of us, and the need to feed our ego.  It’s really quite sad, because the little baby that is loved unconditionally and just for who he/she is eventually learns that their value lies in something external.

That might lead to the third life, which can be called the “New Life.”  This usually takes the shape of some kind of religious experience.  It might be a conversion of some sort, or a water baptism, or a call to follow God, like the disciples received when they dropped their nets.  Sometimes this new life can “stick” and be re-orienting and beneficial.  However I suspect that often-times this conversion experience results in some type of new-found religiosity, in which one is trying to be a “good person” because they believe that is what God or others expect.  It is still a feeding of the false self, it’s just that in this case it is cloaked with religion.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t result in really good people at all, just a different type of superficiality that is fed by a phony type of faith.

The fourth life is one that might be called the “Baptism of Fire.”  Not the kind where the Holy Spirit descended in the appearance of fire and resulted in the disciples speaking in tongues and performing miracles.  Rather it’s the one that burns up all the chaff that we had so carefully accumulated and spent so much time, effort, and money acquiring.  Something happens in our life that almost literally puts us to death.  Jesus said He had this to undergo in Luke 12.  He was referring to His crucifixion.  The disciples underwent it as they watched Jesus be crucified, which was like seeing their hopes and dreams for their life go up in flames.  This life might be called “Life in the Spirit,” or “The Christ Life,” or “God living in me.”  Whatever name you give it, the reality is that something happens, usually a tragedy of some sort, that causes a person to completely re-orient their way of seeing and being.  It’s a way of seeing what matters most, how one sees themselves, others, and God.  It is a new way of being in the world.  It is a way of valuing the “unseen” things, like love, hope, mercy, kindness, graciousness, forgiveness.  What St. Paul calls the “gifts of the Spirit.”  It is an unpleasant and unwelcome experience to get to this place, but it is invaluable beyond words.  It places us on a new path, most likely one that we never would’ve chosen, but also one we would never depart from.  And it prepares us for the fifth life.

The fifth life is entered into through a literal death.  It is the fulfillment of our journey to return to the place from which we began—the very bosom of God.  It is the place where Zoey came from, where we all came from.  We don’t remember it, but I know it must be a beautiful place to result in such a beautiful person.  And you.