The Spirit enlivens the Soul – ROMANS:
--- 8:6 "To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace." ---There were two oak trees on the top of the hill.
Both of the trees were very old, over 100 years, though one of them was slightly older than the other one, like a younger and an older brother standing together. "I remember when the Forest surrounded us and now we are the last two trees here," said the older one.
"I remember that too," said the younger one, "and I also remember when the humans came and built their settlements at the foothill. Half of our siblings were killed at that time."
However, the humans needed wood not only for construction, but also for heating and cooking, making furniture and tools, crafting coaches and buggies, and quite lately, for erecting paper mills, as well.
They used the wood of the Oaks and Beeches, Aspens and Pines; none of our cousins were spared. In the form of a piano, or a wooden sled, or as a door, or as a window, some of the processed bodies of our sibling trees are still there, but their individual souls have departed.
A harp can sing in the hand of the harpist, but the wood in the harp is dead.
"They took too much," said the older. "Now the forest is gone. If they keep going like this, there will soon be no oxygen for them to breathe, so they have to learn how to plant at least as much as they take."
"It does not look like they will ever learn," said the younger.
"No, it does not," sighed the older, "as the other half of our siblings lost their lives when the humans besieged each other’s fortified towns and built Trojan horses, alongside several siege crafts and siege engines—like the Ballista, which resembled a huge but still transportable crossbow, or the catapult, which shot heavy stones or even exploding projectiles, or the well-known battering rams in several sizes, or the siege ladders, or the intimidating siege tower.
Most of the warcrafts and siege engines were made of wood. Even the wheels of the big cannons were made of wood, and the war declarations were sent written on paper."
"So, what is going to happen?" asked the younger oak tree.
"We will have serious conversations with these people 200 years from now, at the latest," said the older.
"How is that possible, to have conversations after this life?" asked the younger one.
That is the major point, said the older one, because only the answer to this question can give us guidance on life, death and the afterlife—but especially on life on Earth, because without guidance one can be completely lost. We need to see the bigger picture to understand, and understanding will help us act accordingly.
The older tree was right; we need the bigger picture. In order to see life and our decisions from the right angle, we have to realize that although it looks like we are here, and it is unimaginable not to be here, this condition is very temporary. Our time is very limited here—even very short—and sometimes it is even cut short by unfortunate events.
We have to understand that in order to be here, we had to come from somewhere. It is in the Bible that God is our ultimate source of life. In the Gospel of Luke, the very pedigree of Jesus can be found in the second part of chapter three, and it has the most interesting statement around its end.
The list begins with Jesus as a son of Joseph, who was the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, and so on, but the list finishes with the prehistoric patriarchs: Methuselah was the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalalel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
Tradition has it that we, as a group of people and as individuals, came from Heaven. It means that we had existed as souls before our conception and our birth, just as Jeremiah wrote: “Now the Lord’s word came to me, saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I sanctified you. I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.’ ”
As God has no biological body, so the soul, being minted after the image of God, is incorporeal. It must have been so, as it is written and well known that humans were created in the image of God.
Also, in the Gospel of John, Jesus told the Samaritan woman: “the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Thus, when we say "we" or "I", it applies only to our spiritual being, which endures the Before Life, suffers this life, and endures the Afterlife as well. This spiritual being is the soul. The soul dwells temporarily in the body, but it is a very short period of time.
Without the soul, the body is lifeless, but the soul is alive without the body. The soul is alive because it is enlivened by God’s Spirit. Thus, the soul receives its life from God and fully depends on God.
We have to understand that we are not our body; the body is an outfit, a vehicle, a tool to serve God. When the soul enters the body, it becomes alive. When the soul leaves the body behind, the body falls lifeless.
After the trials on Earth, the soul moves on for assessment, or we can call it judgment. The soul has a spiritual signature, like a spiritual fingerprint, and it is identifiable by that energy signature, which is not subject to time.
It is also a great comfort to understand that the soul is not subject to sicknesses or physical death. However, our body is subject to all of these. Alhough it is still unique and unrepeatable—by having unique physical signatures like the fingerprint or the iris—nonetheless, our body changes every second.
Only the spiritual stamp of God on our soul can recognize the very person in the mirror at the age of 10 and, seventy years later, at the age of 80.
The two persons in the mirror are both supposed to be me, but even I, myself, can hardly recognize myself, meanwhile remembering the young, almost prehistoric one I once was, or thought I was.
Only because the soul signature is still profoundly the same can I recognize myself in the mirror seventy years later, meanwhile the body went along with the forces of entropy and decay, as it is subjected to the laws of time and space.
There is a great biblical warning that if our conscious mind clings too much to our body, we will have a very hard time in the Afterlife. Proportionally, as much as our mind clings to the body, that part will die together with our body, returning to the Earth.
This parallels the simile of when somebody’s heart becomes hard, like a stone. Jesus himself warned the disciples: “It is the spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing.” The Apostle Paul, echoing the Gospel, says: “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”
May the Lord help the Spirit in us to enable our souls to gain control over the will of our body, in order that the soul shall not serve the body, but serve God, whose is the kingdom and the power and the glory, AMEN.
