Daily Scripture: 1 Corinthians 15:50 Let me say this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot share in the Kingdom of God, nor can something that decays share in what does not decay. 51 Look, I will tell you a secret — not all of us will die! But we will all be changed! 52 It will take but a moment, the blink of an eye, at the final shofar. For the shofar will sound, and the dead will be raised to live forever, and we too will be changed. 53 For this material which can decay must be clothed with imperishability, this which is mortal must be clothed with immortality. 54 When what decays puts on imperishability and what is mortal puts on immortality, then this passage in the Tanakh will be fulfilled:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.[a]
55 “Death, where is your victory?
Death, where is your sting?”[b]
56 The sting of death is sin; and sin draws its power from the Torah; 57 but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Yeshua the Messiah!
58 So, my dear brothers, stand firm and immovable, always doing the Lord’s work as vigorously as you can, knowing that united with the Lord your efforts are not in vain.[Footnotes:
1 Corinthians 15:54 Isaiah 25:8
1 Corinthians 15:55 Hosea 13:14]
Reflection Questions:The apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, who lived in a skeptical Greek society, that we can face even death with total confidence. For Paul, death did not end our service to God. It moved us on to the next chapter of (in C. S. Lewis’s phrase) “the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” Like him, we can live our day-to-day lives in the light of Jesus' resurrection.
- When Paul said “flesh and blood,” he didn’t mean just “physical existence,” but the brokenness that haunts our lives (cf., e.g., Romans 8:7-8). Paul said Jesus’ resurrection means we can trust that, in God’s eternity, all the brokenness and hurt will be gone. There are many details we don’t know about how eternity will work. What is one promised change you deeply look forward to in God’s world made new?
- At the end of this passage, Paul urged his readers to be “firm, unshakable, excelling in the work of the Lord.” Those words were for all Christians, not just people called into vocational ministry. In what areas of life are you answering that call? What value is there in trusting that whatever work you do for God and others “isn’t going to be for nothing,” even in the face of death?
Lord Jesus, make and keep me firm and unshakable. Walk with me every day of this life, and then go with me on into the next chapters of the great adventure you have in store. Amen.
Insights from Wendy Connelly
Wendy Connelly, wife to Mark and mom to Lorelei & Gryffin, is Community Outreach Director at the Leawood campus, a graduate student at Saint Paul School of Theology, Faith Walk columnist for the Kansas City Star, and co-leads the “Live and Let Think” dialogues at Resurrection Downtown.Our family celebrated the Lenten season with a cup of mail-order caterpillars, watching with eager fascination as these barely visible bugs doubled daily in size. In mysterious synchrony, the caterpillars crept to the top of the cup and soon dangled and danced their way into a mummified state, tethered and tied in chrysalis form. From the outside looking in at these petrified cocoons, it seemed the caterpillars had been tangled in the grip of death.
By all appearances, the little bugs had labored for nothing.
I can recall a recent time in which it seemed I had been laboring for nothing, too. I felt a stirring sense of the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and had followed with reckless obedience to become a seminary student, risking finances, comfort, and even the approval of some. Not knowing what lay ahead, these risks felt utterly foolish. But it turns out that all that labor and risk served a purpose I could not see, and eventually brought me to The Church of the Resurrection, where I’m delighted to serve on staff.
Do you feel, sometimes, like you too are laboring for nothing? Like it’s time to throw in the towel? Retreat? Give up? Where do you need God’s Resurrection power today? Have you bent to your knees to ask for it?
Just as my kids and I delighted over butterflies pressing out from their cocoons at Easter, so too have I witnessed God transform the great toils of life into things of strange beauty. I wish I could go back to reassure my younger self, knowing what I know now of God’s glorious design. Those little laboring caterpillars—they can’t possess the slightest inkling of the power already set forth within them.
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