College Reflection                                                                                                     2009.07.19        Joseph Wang, Jason Lai

College Reflections — Joseph Wang

An obvious fact: many things only last for a brief period; they are ephemeral.  Specifically, humans live for some time and then die.  Death produces a particular fear in many people.  So it seems to me that we, in an endeavor to mitigate that fear, have sought remedial alternatives like reincarnation and accumulation.  However, ff there is a biblical response to death, we know this isn’t it. 

At the outset, there is clearly some sort of connection happening between our experience and Christ’s.  While we die and enter judgment, Christ dies to save us.  So even though there is a parallel, nonetheless, it isn’t synonymous on all fronts.  We do not rescue Christ, he rescues us.  The tone of our arrival before God at judgment is different than that of Christ’s.  The point is then to draw a cogent illustration of human dependency and emphasize God’s provision.  He is at the helm of our salvation.  For this reason, if we lack him who saves, we are not saved. 

There are two uplifting truths that you should note in v. 27 about the nature of death.  First, Paul writes, “Inasmuch as it is appointed for man to die once.”   Here, we are not concerned with the hour or day but with the person who appoints.  It is God who “appoints” and therefore it must occur at the divinely scheduled time.  God is the driving impetus; all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God. 

Job is akin to death.  The bible says he was a righteous man and lived in opulence.  Then he lost it all.  In response to the news that his daughters were killed by the collapse of their home, he says “THE LORD GAVE and the LORD has taken away blessed be the name of the lord.”  The question is what prompted such a response?  It must be something more than simply an acknowledgement of God’s sovereignty over death but maybe even a revelation of human sin. 

We can rest assured neither disease, earthquakes, fire, Satan nor anything else can schedule death, but God himself who ultimately decides. 

Secondly, the implications of “once” are huge. If this is true, 150,000 individuals are ushered into this judgment everyday.  And this means death is not the end of our existence.  Nobody just disappears; rather it’s time to get judged.  That is awesome to know.

Lastly, God’s role in death is indelible.  If you say God is not in charge of death, that is tantamount to asserting there is no Gospel.  You compromise the whole thing.  If you delete God, Christ’s death was a mere tragic, circumstantial, historic event.  It becomes insanity bursting with meaninglessness, hollowness and nothingness.  He’s God, greater than which there is none.  If you remove God’s activity from this, you destroy the gospel and morph the crucifixion of Christ into a powerless plight.

College Reflections — Jason Lai

Many times the things of the world can distract us; they offer us temporary gratification and satisfaction.  The world sells itself saying, “Come to me; satisfaction guaranteed.”  However when we take a look at Psalm 63, we see David’s satisfaction is in God and not in the things of this world.  This is a psalm of David that serves as a good reminder for us of how God fully satisfies our soul.

One can see David’s passion in yearning, wanting, and desiring God.  We can see this from the three verbs: seek, thirsts, and longs.  We see David earnestly seeking God like a treasure, very passionately.  The feeling that we get is a sense of aching eagerness, like one thirsting for water. 

David tells his readers that he has already seen God’s power (strength/mightiness) and glory (beauty/splendor/magnificence) in the past.  He remembers how God was good to Him.  We see how God’s love is better than this current, present life, NOW.  He longs for and is satisfied in God.  His reaction is praising God with his lips.

Life is precious and no one likes to lose it.  But we see here that the love of God is better than life.  Those that know our Lord personally should know that God is better than life.  God’s loyal love (loving kindness) is steady and unchanging, and thus better than life itself.  That is, it is better not to live than to live without God.

The message of this psalm is that the loyal love of God is surpassing all worth even the worth of life.  God’s presence of power, glory, and love of God breaks the sense of yearning/deprivation and thirst; God’s love satisfies.  This should spark a praising and enjoying and delighting in God. 

And yet, those who truly know God’s great love sometimes still spend so much time trying to find satisfaction somewhere else.  We are quick to forget God’s love.  The world lures us and moves us from one satisfaction to another that is unfulfilling.  We are so easily pleased and satisfied in other things, we don’t long after God as we do with the things of the world. 

Do we want God, want him badly, intensely as David, as one who thirsts?  If this is David’s reaction, before he was able to see Jesus die for our sins, how much more should we long to seek God?  How much more should we desire God, the One who sacrificed His son for undeserving sinners like us? 

Are you satisfied in this world or in God, where satisfaction is guaranteed?  For everything in life, God is enough and He quenches our thirst in life.  Do you know and remember that God is better than life?