Are you DEAD?

Sometimes I get tired of interacting with the dead.
Many of them are nice people; some can even be cordial, passionate and fascinating –  the well-educated, well-read, well-traveled dead. I’ll even have a beer or two with the dead sometimes, chatting about art or politics or other topics of mutual interest…
but just drop the G-bomb or mention Our Lord and Savior and it becomes evident:
they are dead. Dead as the proverbial doornail. So dead it’s not worth holding a mirror to their mouths.
So dead they probably read the NYT Review of Books over their shade-grown organic coffee on Sunday morning while the other side sings praises to Almighty God, practicing for Heaven and hearing the absolute and binding truths of the eternal Gospel proclaimed.
Some zombies (you?) are so dead they don’t even get annoyed with God – they just sniff and roll their eyes in bemused indifference or gentle scorn. But you gotta love them. The dead are all around us after all. We shop at the same stores, our children swim in the same pools, we love the same sunsets… it’s quite a bewildering paradox.
We who are alive forevermore are called to love the dead.
And we are commanded to share the news of the free gift of life with them. Even when this causes them to have a zombie hissy-fit and stamp their zombie feet and rail about Free-Thinking and Scientific Reason, and the Big Bang and Chuckie Darwin and The Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades (as if we are responsible for the latter). The dead can sometimes get nasty and do great damage  – be careful. The pearls are real – and so are the swine. They stoned both Stephen and Paul – only Paul didn’t stay dead… what I mean is neither of them stayed dead but, um…Paul came back and kept on telling the dead people about Life. He actually started these little communities of life called “churches”. Come to think of it, that’s what Jesus did even before St. Stephen and St. Paul.  He went around telling dead people about Life. And they had a massive Judeo/Roman hissy fit.  And somehow B.C. became A.D. in the process.  (Zombies prefer C.E. or A.C.E. of course…)

The thing of it is – many who are dead right now will become alive later (get de-zombiefied) and join the Kingdom of Heaven. Will you be one of them?

All of this reminds me of something a man whose wisdom I greatly respect once said:

“Christ did not come to make bad people good or even to make good people better. He came to make dead people alive eternally.”

Now – on to a great poem and Anti-Zombie incantation:  

Psalm 88 [KJV]:

O lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee:

 Let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry;

 For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.

I am counted with them that go down into the pit:
I am as a man that hath no strength:

 Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave,
whom thou rememberest no more: and they are cut off from thy hand.

 Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps.

Thy wrath lieth hard upon me,
and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Selah.

 Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me;
thou hast made me an abomination unto them:
I am shut up, and I cannot come forth.

 Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction:
Lord, I have called daily upon thee,
I have stretched out my hands unto thee.

Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee? Selah.

Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave?
or thy faithfulness in destruction?

 Shall thy wonders be known in the dark?
and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?

 But unto thee have I cried, O Lord;
and in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee.

Lord, why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me?

 I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up:
while I suffer thy terrors I am distracted.

 Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off.

 They came round about me daily like water;
they compassed me about together.

Lover and friend hast thou put far from me,
and mine acquaintance into darkness.

image credits:  scaryforkids.com  

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