Dead or Alive
04/15/12 11:50 Filed in: David Ellis
It’s hard to confuse the two when you see them from the outside.
Breathing, moving, warm, alive. Or still, cold, pale, flatlined.
But that’s from the outside.
Is it so easy to tell from the inside?
Of all the descriptors we have in our language, no two words can come closer to conveying the concept of two polar opposites than these two words.
Dead or Alive.
There are no confusing the two ideas. No grey lines. You are either one or you are the other. No such thing as “kinda dead” or “mostly dead”, (as uttered in that classic movie The Princess Bride). Your just dead. Or not.
Other words have been used down thru the centuries to try and capture the same idea. Dark and Light. Asleep and Awake. Imprisoned or Free. Lost and Found. Great words to be sure, and all are like objects orbiting around the same concept. Each trying to describe a certain aspect or variation of the same. But when it comes right down to it, when all the variations and impacts have been summed, what you are left with… ALL you are left with… is Dead or Alive.
Death or Life. Each standing in stark contrast to the other. No mistaking one for the other.
As simple as it may sound, the profound Truth is that these are the ONLY two options we have for our lives. Yes, if you are reading this, then you have biological life. But beyond that, or shall I say, inside or underneath that, you have only one state- you are either walking around dead or you are walking around alive. Your heart- the inmost part of you- is either one or the other.
Dead or Alive.
Yet most of us don’t truly understand or live in that level of reality on a daily basis. We live in some sort of half-light. We accept biological life as the standard, the evaluation, of our state of being. Never thinking much deeper, beyond the biological, to the state of our heart, where real life, or real death, finds its abode, its root.
As a result, most of us just plod thru life, going thru the motions. Work, eat, sleep, repeat. Sure, sometimes we find ourselves bored, or tired or stressed out or… But most of us never make the connection. Never realize that it’s NOT the hassles outside that are killing us, it’s the Death inside that’s working its way outward… Slowly consuming us bit by bit until one day it claims our very biological life as well.
So without that knowledge we make our owns schemes, our own strategies to combat the inevitable. For some, the strategy is to numb themselves thru drink, drugs or sex. For some, it is to ignore it through work or busyness. For others, it’s trying to fight it through external attempts- some turn to physical approaches (there is a reason plastic surgery is at an all time high), some turn to religious diligence and church attendance- but in the end, both methods are just fighting the same way. Trying to externally control what is internally happening.
And those who call themselves Christians often find themselves stuck in the very same positions. Even though we have been implanted with Life Itself, we have lived and learned a way of life filled with all those old strategies… so we just keep on doing them. Almost by rote, unaware of what exactly we have Living inside of us. We are like a man cured of cancer who keeps going back for chemo because that’s just all he knows to do. He thinks that is the way life is supposed to be lived, that it is the only way to fight the cancer, never realizing that there is another way to live, because the cancer’s actually been cured.
Here’s the good news, and the Answer, for both groups of people.
Life IS available. And to be honest, that sounds so anti-climatic and trite. It should… because we’ve conditioned ourselves to live with Death. So we dismiss and even trivialize anything that seems otherwise.
But just think about it for a second.
Let the Word itself start to seep into your mind and your heart.
LIFE.
LIVING ALIVE!
What would it REALLY mean, what would it REALLY look like in your life, if you discovered that available to you, in the very core of your core, you KNEW in your gut that you had the very Presence of Life Itself… Himself… ALREADY ALIVE. And that instead of Death working its way outward, it was LIFE that was aching, yearning, longing to be set Free in you? To explode outward with all that is life-giving for you! And that instead of fighting hard against death, you simply needed to open yourself to Life, to the Freedom it brings, to the Joy that dances along side it, to the Strength it creates in your heart and mind, to the Passion it births inside of you, to the Restoration that follows in its wake!
Would that revolutionize your life? Change everything? Reorient your very existence? Ignite an inextinguishable fire in you?
So I guess it comes down to something so simply, but eloquently, stated in one of the best movies ever made, The Shawshank Redemption…
“It is a simple choice really… Either Get Busy Living, or Get Busy Dying.”
So what’s it going to be for you?
I invite you to discover for the first time or if you’ve lost your way, to recover again… The Life!
Join us for IGNITE!
Life… Your Life… awaits.
Living the Revolution!
David
Dead or Alive.
There are no confusing the two ideas. No grey lines. You are either one or you are the other. No such thing as “kinda dead” or “mostly dead”, (as uttered in that classic movie The Princess Bride). Your just dead. Or not.
Other words have been used down thru the centuries to try and capture the same idea. Dark and Light. Asleep and Awake. Imprisoned or Free. Lost and Found. Great words to be sure, and all are like objects orbiting around the same concept. Each trying to describe a certain aspect or variation of the same. But when it comes right down to it, when all the variations and impacts have been summed, what you are left with… ALL you are left with… is Dead or Alive.
Death or Life. Each standing in stark contrast to the other. No mistaking one for the other.
As simple as it may sound, the profound Truth is that these are the ONLY two options we have for our lives. Yes, if you are reading this, then you have biological life. But beyond that, or shall I say, inside or underneath that, you have only one state- you are either walking around dead or you are walking around alive. Your heart- the inmost part of you- is either one or the other.
Dead or Alive.
Yet most of us don’t truly understand or live in that level of reality on a daily basis. We live in some sort of half-light. We accept biological life as the standard, the evaluation, of our state of being. Never thinking much deeper, beyond the biological, to the state of our heart, where real life, or real death, finds its abode, its root.
As a result, most of us just plod thru life, going thru the motions. Work, eat, sleep, repeat. Sure, sometimes we find ourselves bored, or tired or stressed out or… But most of us never make the connection. Never realize that it’s NOT the hassles outside that are killing us, it’s the Death inside that’s working its way outward… Slowly consuming us bit by bit until one day it claims our very biological life as well.
So without that knowledge we make our owns schemes, our own strategies to combat the inevitable. For some, the strategy is to numb themselves thru drink, drugs or sex. For some, it is to ignore it through work or busyness. For others, it’s trying to fight it through external attempts- some turn to physical approaches (there is a reason plastic surgery is at an all time high), some turn to religious diligence and church attendance- but in the end, both methods are just fighting the same way. Trying to externally control what is internally happening.
And those who call themselves Christians often find themselves stuck in the very same positions. Even though we have been implanted with Life Itself, we have lived and learned a way of life filled with all those old strategies… so we just keep on doing them. Almost by rote, unaware of what exactly we have Living inside of us. We are like a man cured of cancer who keeps going back for chemo because that’s just all he knows to do. He thinks that is the way life is supposed to be lived, that it is the only way to fight the cancer, never realizing that there is another way to live, because the cancer’s actually been cured.
Here’s the good news, and the Answer, for both groups of people.
Life IS available. And to be honest, that sounds so anti-climatic and trite. It should… because we’ve conditioned ourselves to live with Death. So we dismiss and even trivialize anything that seems otherwise.
But just think about it for a second.
Let the Word itself start to seep into your mind and your heart.
LIFE.
LIVING ALIVE!
What would it REALLY mean, what would it REALLY look like in your life, if you discovered that available to you, in the very core of your core, you KNEW in your gut that you had the very Presence of Life Itself… Himself… ALREADY ALIVE. And that instead of Death working its way outward, it was LIFE that was aching, yearning, longing to be set Free in you? To explode outward with all that is life-giving for you! And that instead of fighting hard against death, you simply needed to open yourself to Life, to the Freedom it brings, to the Joy that dances along side it, to the Strength it creates in your heart and mind, to the Passion it births inside of you, to the Restoration that follows in its wake!
Would that revolutionize your life? Change everything? Reorient your very existence? Ignite an inextinguishable fire in you?
So I guess it comes down to something so simply, but eloquently, stated in one of the best movies ever made, The Shawshank Redemption…
“It is a simple choice really… Either Get Busy Living, or Get Busy Dying.”
So what’s it going to be for you?
I invite you to discover for the first time or if you’ve lost your way, to recover again… The Life!
Join us for IGNITE!
Life… Your Life… awaits.
Living the Revolution!
David