For all live to Him

Today on a regularly scheduled visit to have my teeth cleaned, the hygienist noticed something on the roof of my mouth, towards the back.

"I don't like that!" she said.

She took a picture and showed it to me: it looks like some sort of lesion. And she said the picture looks better than it actually looks in my mouth. Recently I've indeed sensed some irritation in that area; what feels like a sinus infection. But I thought nothing of it.

Until now.

The hygienist called the dentist in to have a look. When she came in, after the usual greetings, she said: "Well, my first reaction is I don't like it..."

So she scheduled me to see an oral surgeon, but they couldn't get me in until the middle of next week.

I am now trying to prepare class lectures. But of course my mind is on this new problem. What can it be? Hmmm ... just yesterday I posted about our stay here being so short ...

I reach out to the New Testament next to my computer. Maybe this is one of those times that opening the Book randomly will give insight. This is what I read:

Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him.

Jesus said this in answer to the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. But I've always found it to be an odd answer, because Jesus' proof that there is a resurrection of the dead is by ... recalling Moses at the burning bush. Here is what Jesus said:

But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him ...

So the very fact that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob somehow proves that all live to God. That is to say, all remain alive to Him.

So this passage tells me I will live; it just may be "alive to Him" in another dimension altogether.

This will have to be my comfort for today, and perhaps for upcoming days as well.

Logos2Go

Luke 20.27-39 There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, 28 and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. 30 And the second 31 and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32 Afterward the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.” 34 And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, 35 but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36 for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. 37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.” 39 Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” 40 For they no longer dared to ask him any question.

I also found this, the words of the theologian Jurgen Moltmann:

“With God, nothing is at all lost. Everything remains in God. We experience our life as temporal and mortal. But as God experiences it, our life is eternally immortal. Nothing is lost to God, not the moments of happiness, not the times of pain. ‘All live to him (Luke 20.38).’”