A Life More Than Death

Our cat's sick. Uggy is all of 84 (cat) years old. She's been with us even before my husband passed on - that's 12 years ago. The kids practically grew up with her. If I remember correctly, she was part of a litter of our previous cat. I named her Uggy, becoz she was well, sorta ugly...all a mass of brown/black patches. But what she lacks in looks, she certainly makes up for in personality...she's the family favourite, becoz she's the most docile and gentle of creatures (read lazy if you like). Give her food and she's happy (sounds like me, sometimes). She spends her days snoozing in the sun or wherever tickles her fancy, eating, and snoozing again (honestly there are days I would trade my life for hers). She very rarely gets sick at all, and she's never disappeared from the house, unlike Zaza who's prone to wander off every now and then, or worse Simba the temporary intruder who has now totally deserted our camp . But some days ago, Uggy simply vanished. Last I saw of her she was in the back garden amongst the ferns. We missed her mews at chow-time. Zaza got all the crumbs under the dinner table instead. We prayed. The next morning, I found her lying at the back, very weak and refusing food. Now that's a cause for concern, coz Uggy never refuses food. A quick trip to the vet set me back 5x more than what it would have caused me to see the doctor - I could have sworn cat flu and human flu seems to be pretty much the same, since when I catch the flu bug, I also get diarrhea, am listless and don't care much for eating - which are Uggy's exact symptoms, as I see it anyway... gee, at this rate, my kids should have studied to become animal doctors! Anyway, thankfully it wasn't like she was dying of old age, though the thot did cross our minds....

Death. A thought that creeps up on all of us at one time or another of our lives.All of us will get hit by what i call the 'tsunami' moment, when we stare at the death of something/ someone in the face, and we wonder, is this all there is to life? A journey into death? We try all sorts of things to avoid, delay or overcome its inevitability. Superstition doesn't wanna talk about it, arrogance attempts to deny or condemn it, fear trembles and hides from it. Why? Could it be that deep in every human heart, we refuse to die, becoz we know instinctively we are meant to live? A long time ago, the wisest king on earth penned these words, "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end (Ecc.3:11)...

Eternity in the heart.... could that be why humankind has always hungered after immortality? We see it daily in advertisements to smooth out wrinkles on our faces, we pop wonder pills, even as science tinkles with cells and what-not in the never-ending quest to extend the human life span.

That's why we all root for heroes like Victor, the young nerd in Tim Burton's latest offering Frankenweenie, who can't quite let go of his dead pet, digs up the corpse, sews it up and literally zaps it back to life thru megawatts of lightning power. And we cheer James Bond on in Skyfall when he turns up kicking after he's supposed to have died, and dead-pans to the enemy that his hobby is resurrection. Reel life plays on real life after all.

2000 years ago, in real life, a man did die, and did get resurrected. Not by man's ingenuity, not by nature's might but by the power of God.Yet the human mind cannot fathom the impossible made possible. So till today the doubts remain, the denial and unbelief continues regarding the life, death and resurrection of a man called Jesus Christ. We prefer to keep resurrection in the realm of reel life instead; in so doing, we rule out the only answer to death in real life. We can commiserate and identify with fictitious movie screen heroes, but we can't believe a man who hung dead on a cross and then came back alive, proving that death can and was conquered when He declared, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live" (John 11.25)

We consign ourselves to being merely mortal, even tho our hearts know we were made for more, so much more than death...



 "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it"
 ....Matthew 10:39