Grace in the Twinkling of an Eye

I had a minor outpatient procedure this week, one that involved anesthesia for a brief time.  (Actually, I wasn’t planning to say “colonoscopy” here at all. But it’s an opportunity to say to you:  Please do not neglect this!  If you’ve never had one or are overdue, it’s no big deal – and it could save your life.  I’ve done too many funerals to believe otherwise. Go. You are too precious to God not to.)

Okay – now back to Tidings.  The most wondrous thing about this to me was the experience of the anesthesia.  I said it’s really a form of time-travel:  One second you’re in this room; the next second you’re in another room and an hour has gone by.  Zip!   It’s that immediate – and that amazing.  So many of you have had the same experience, maybe more often and for longer than mine.

But it got me pondering.

I give God great thanks for the gift of anesthesia and God’s trained practitioners. I also wondered if the gift of death is anything like this experience.  Your eyes close involuntarily.  Consciousness drops away. You lose any conception of earthly time.  You trust others to take care of your body. You are not in pain. You awaken in another location, seemingly immediately and yet much later.  You’re beckoned by soft voices that welcome you into a different reality from the one you left.

I take this as a glimpse of the mercy God has prepared for us. I know the reality is probably far more complex.  I believe in a time of judgment, for example (which this experience didn’t include).  But even in preparing for that moment we’re urged to remember that the One who judges us most finally is the same One who loves us most fully.

Christmas is obviously about the birth of Jesus, not his death. But our final encounter with Jesus can come at any moment.  A lot of us have lost family members over these past weeks, too, so any musing about death is always timely.  

So Paul writes to the Corinthians: 

Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye… and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. (1 Cor. 15:52)

Amazing things happen in the twinkling of an eye. Much to give thanks for.