A Fish Out of Water

Sometimes I feel like a fish. It is not that I am a great swimmer; my only real aquatic adventures were bobbing around in the San Diego surf. My sense of being a fish comes more from the experience of living within my own familiar environment, as a fish is within its watery world. It is aware of nothing unusual in a briny medium; gathering from the depths all its necessities. It is normal an natural; home.

This world, this culture, this environment of cars and houses and streets and cities and people is where I live. It is my ecosystem.

In Christ Jesus, there is another realm; light and warm and free. But, like a fish out of water, I think I cannot live there yet. Like the fish, I fear that I would die, lacking the necessary breathing apparatus. Leaping above the surface, though, into its glorious freedom, I catch tantalizing snapshot glimpses of this wondrous kingdom. I hold my breath and see that which is unseeable; know that which is unknowable; experience that which is beyond experience-mysteries revealed.

Though it often seems like this someday of wings, feathers and flight may be a long way off, these brief glimpses reveal a more-than-real reality. I discover that, in truth, I already live in the bright, airy world of eternity-in Christ Jesus my Lord. And you all, dear ones in Him with me, are a window into that other realm.

  07/02/07

Cells in the Body

At the moment of conception, two partial cells join into one complete cell. The first cell immediately divides into two; the two into four; four into eight until the completed adult body contains around three trillion  cells. At the final stage in this multiplication-by-division explosion, each cell is in its assigned location; here a spinal neuron; there a muscle fiber; over there a bone cell.

Each cell lives only with extreme difficulty outside of its assigned place. Cells removed from the body tend to die rapidly even when supported with advanced technology. Each cell lives only to contribute to the whole body its special function and contribution. The digestive cells break down and absorb nutrients. Nerve cells convey messages and give the ability to think, remember and reason. Tongue cells "taste" the watermelon. Hearing cells carry the voice of the beloved to our brain.

Each cell is bathed in a sea of fluid which brings what the cell needs and carries away its wastes products.

We, the born-again individuals are like cells in the body of Christ. We have our own assigned places and functions. We cannot truly live outside of the body of Christ. Our contributions support the life of the body and the body supplies the nutrients and other essentials for our growth and livelihood.

And we are all bathed in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ who is Himself our nourishment and our waste carrier. He mediates our interactions and brings to us individually those things supplied by the other members of the body-the hormones of growth and function, the immunization others have learned from their contact with the world and themselves and the instructions for the second-by-second living that is our place in the body and in the world. Our purpose, our pleasure, our existence is based on being in the body.