Daily Lesson for April 19, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 35 through 37:

35 But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ 36Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed . . .

There is no Resurrection without there first being a death. Something must die before it is reborn again. There must be an end before there is a new beginning. Holy Week has to first conclude with Holy Saturday and all its grief and solemnity before the Resurrection rides the wings of dawn early in the morning on the first day of the week. 

The journey to new creation requires us to accept the death of the old. What is to come can only arrive with the end of what is. The end of what is is the beginning of what is to come. The burial of the old man must take place before a new man can walk freely out of the tomb.

We have an anthem in the Church called "Hymn of Promise" the last line of which says:

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;

In our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity,

In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory,

Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

The end of our now is not the end of everything.  We may lament that the end has come; but we should remember that it is, as we say, the end "for good".  It is the end of what is and also the seed of what is to be.