All Life Comes from God

As they moved down the other side of the bridge, Gabriella started a conversation in order to take their minds off of their desire to hurry. “When you think of the word life, Alexa, how would you define it?”

“Oh my, that’s an interesting question. The first thing that comes to my mind is a brand new little baby held by a new mother. It seems like life pulsates around that image every time I’ve ever been blessed to witness it in person. But then, I think of its opposite. I think of how I felt when my mother died. I was by her bed when she exhaled her last breath. I collapsed in a sobbing pool of grief at that moment. I could see and feel the life leave her body. In my mind’s eye, I could see her spirit float up through the ceiling of the hospital room. Only a few months later, I had the same experience with my father. I felt like there was less life in my world after that; less life and less light.”

“How about you, Ray?”

“What I think of is the first time I saw Alexa. I fell in love with her at first sight. I instantly felt more alive than I had at any other moment of my life to that point. And when I allow my imagination to explore the thought that she might die before me, it feels like it saps the life out of me, and before I can stop them the tears come falling out of my eyes.”

“Those are beautiful definitions of life, but I’m sure you know that it’s the biggest word in any language. There are so many ways to talk about life; so many ways to define it and experience it. Imagine the distance between the concepts of bacterial life and the totality of billions of human lives back on Earth and on all the colony planets of Earth. All life is holy, and since death is the absence of life, all death is a curse . . . the absence of joy, beauty, light, love, and God. God is Life and all life comes from God.”

“I realize you’re bringing this up now, because we’re at the transition of our journey marked by the Bridge of Life, and we’re journeying toward the Tree of Life? I’m sensing that the whole universe is alive. Is that true?”

“Yes, Alexa. There’s no truth more accurate than that. I want you to understand, as much as you can at this point in your journey, what the Tree of Life represents. There are no words in the Bible that say it better than John 1:4, ‘In him was life, and the life was the light of men’ and John 3:16, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.’ Life is God and God is Life. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:26 that the last enemy God will destroy is death. I wonder how many Christians who know this verse have thought far enough to realize what God is saying here. If God destroys death, then there will be nothing that is dead. The entire universe will be eternally alive. Can hell exist in a universe that is one hundred percent Life with no death anywhere in it?”

THE FOUR RIVERS OF EDEN, by Robert Clemons, available at www.amazon.com/dp/B07YGQHNK7