Ah, to live long, to be one hundred years old, to even be 120 years old.  So said a person with whom my wife and I had dinner last night.  In her seventies, she does everything she believes she can possibly do to maintain her health and, she hopes, longevity.  She aims to live well into the second decade of her centennial birthday. "There will be so much to experience," she says.
     True enough.  Given the rapid pace of technological advancement we experience today, we have every reason to think that the next forty or fifty years of human existence on planet earth will be full of incredible scientific, medical, and cultural developments. We have much to which to look forward.  Most importantly to our friend, perhaps even life itself will be extended.
     However, no one who is studying such things has posited that, even in the face of all these changes, life itself will not, eventually, end.  One day, the life that all of us live, appreciate, and love will come to a close.  One day, we will stop experiencing our earthly existence.  Whatever else we make ourselves, we will not likely to be able to make ourselves imperishable.
     So what's next?  Maybe nothing, but on the other hand, maybe everything.  As I read this morning through Luke's account of Jesus' resurrection, I was struck anew by the enormous challenge it presents to human thought:  could someone really rise from the dead?  Everything we know about the human body says otherwise.  Yet everything we know about the rest of the universe, physical as well as metaphysical, says that, yes, it could indeed happen.  We therefore face a most challenging choice:  do we accept what we see perceptually, or do we accept what we see perceptually and spiritually?  On this planet, we cannot have one without the other.
     There is so much that, this side of death, we will never understand about its aftermath.  There is so much that, from our earthly vantage point, we do not grasp about what follows it.  But that's not the point.  It is rather that we look at the larger picture of what truth ought to be:  something that we, finite beings, cannot, ultimately, fully define.  We're not absolute.
     By the way, I'll be traveling for a few weeks, exploring and hiking through several sets of mountains in the American West, so will not be posting for a while.  I look forward to reconnecting when I return.  Thanks for reading!