Are You Living?

As I was heading up to the seminary, slowly weaving through the traffic, I caught the words to the song...

Today I found myself,
After searching all these years,
And the man that I saw,
He wasn't at all who I'd thought He'd be,
I was lost when You found me here,
And I was broken beyond repair,
Then You came along and sang Your song over me


It feels like I'm born again
It feels like I'm living
For the very first time
For the very first time,
In my life
(Third Day, Born Again)

It was so appropriate for the moment.  The service I was heading to was about re-birth.  It was about getting a new body.

My colleague and friend, Dr. Rio, had a radical transformation in 2005.  He had slipped into a coma because his kidneys were failing.  While in the coma, God clearly called him.  Dr. Rio heard God say to him "everything you have heard and read about me is TRUE."  Dr. Rio miraculously came out of the coma, and had an intense hunger and thirst to seek God.  He took his family to the church on the seminary campus and that began his transformation.  Dr. Rio fell head over heel for God and served him with all his might, doing medical missions, offering free clinics to his people, and going to seminary to become a preacher, all the while, going three times every week for dialysis. 

This past Monday, Dr. Rio had yet another radical transformation.  Dr. Rio was completely healed, and he received his new body.  Jesus called him home.

As I was going to his service, listening to this song, I couldn't help but think about each one of us.  We have the opportunity to really live, or to walk around like the dead. 

We had another tragedy this week in our Nazarene schools here in the Philippines.  The president of our Visayan Nazarene Bible College also got called home to her perfectly healed, new body.  She was just diagnosed in January with cancer, and is now free and clear. 

This has been a difficult week with all the trauma in Japan, the fighting in the middle east, and right here in our community, the passing of two very prominent people of our body.

But......God comes along and sings his song over us, we can be born again, we get to live despite our circumstances.  He is God, and He is offering us life!  WOW! 

Dr. Rio knew that he was going to lose the battle with his kidneys eventually, yet it didn't stop him from living.  All of us are going to lose this battle with our earthly bodies eventually, yet, that doesn't have to keep us from really living now....with peace.....with joy.....with God singing over us.

I hope you can sing that song with all your heart.  If you cant, seek God....he promises to show himself to those who seek him.  He loves us so very, very much!!