The birth of the soul
“Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (Jn. 3:3).
An egg comes into being deep within the female ovary. All the parts and mechanisms that form that egg manufacture an insipid, inactive body that has the potential for human life. The egg is not the human life, but only the potential for it. Once produced, the egg moves down the fallopian tube, on its way to oblivion. I say oblivion, because after a week or two, before it reaches its destination, it just breaks up and is washed out of the mother’s reproductive system.
But if it is met by the father’s cells, a whole different scenario occurs. The most lively, the strongest and fastest of his reproductive cells, is the first to reach the egg, and penetrates the cloud of nursing cells and the outer membrane. It transfers all its energy and predesigned reproductive burden into the egg, and the egg is never, ever again the same.
From a lifeless, sleeping machine, the egg wakes up from an otherwise short trip down a 12 inch tube, to begin a long journey far from the mother-host, a journey that will last many, many decades, in a body full of life and intelligence, so inconceivably beyond the dead thing it was in its unregenerated state. No longer cold and lifeless, it is a moving, multiplying zygote; the embryonic machinery of intelligent life. It will take months of slow, unconscious development, but the process goes on. All the factors that are needed come into play in a daily ongoing way.
Only the mother knows what’s happening. Long before baby comes forth, she is intimately acquainted with it. While baby is oblivious to the life changing epoch taking place, life is nonetheless changing for it, and mother is aware of it all, moment by moment monitoring its growth, and living in anticipation and excitement.
Finally, baby is ready for introduction into the big world. Still weak and heavily dependent on mother, the time has come to leave its warm, perfectly comfortable womb which has become the only home it knows. It has no choice to stay. Regardless of how much it desires that old life, God refuses to allow it. For its own and its mother’s good, it must leave. Life has its benefits and also it’s demands.
Into the new world comes little baby. Still nursed along, though differently from before, it moves into a new stage of quasi-self-support. Mother is perfect for this transition for baby; she is fitted with the tools needed for baby’s survival in its new life. She is soft, she is warm, and her voice is higher pitched to suit baby’s tiny ear drums; yet she is knowledgeable in life and caretaking. She supplements for baby what baby can’t do for itself.
So baby survives birth into this world. Baby has three basic entities to its being—physical, intellectual, and spiritual—all woven or entangled together. So interconnected are these three that their points of division is unobservable, yet those connections are recognized to exist. Any one entity of the three cannot function properly without the healthy operation of the others.
Each of the three faculties begins to develop at different stages during baby’s existence. First is the physical aspect. From the very beginning, the body busily grows, even while the mind is still waking up. Then we see the intelligence come to life. Observation skills and memory awaken as the body continues to grow and develop, and the brain emerges from its dormancy.
Last of the three attributes to come to life is the soul—the seat of trust and love. Love and trust cannot exist without a functioning mind that can appreciate love and the many gifts in the world. And neither mind nor soul can perform without the energy coming from a healthy and rested body. All three work together to make the active, alert, and happy human being.
But the soul is not complete if it simply lives with the animal kingdom. Animals cannot provide the full requirement of the human’s deepest desire for love. And neither is the human spirit completely fulfilled with trust and love only for another human being. This is true because the trust is resting in something that is not perfectly and ever trustworthy and loving. For some sooner, for others later, the human heart is disappointed and hurt by those it has come to hope in.
Another discrepancy in the soul is within itself. It is born weakened by sin; it is naturally self-centered. It is not born naturally connected with God, and it develops separate from His love. So there exists an inherent source of irritation, a lack that is not filled, disturbing the development and the health of the mind and the body. If the connection with it’s Creator is not perfectly restored, death of the soul will result, and then of the mind and body.
We are like the egg that is born in the ovary and which comes floating down the fallopian tube. We are born and destined to oblivion. While the egg remains as it was at birth, untouched, undisturbed, unawakened by the sperm, it is destined to break apart and be washed away as if it never existed. In that process we see the justice and mercy of God. The ungerminated egg had no capacity for human life, therefore it was allowed to go its way and come to nothing. It attempted nothing, and produced nothing.
We come into this world with all the machinery we need to glorify our Creator—an amazing human body, complete with an amazing intellect. What more could God give us to come into the closest bond with Him? But we must make the choice to get to Him. He almost suffocates us with Himself by way of so many gifts that should wisk us into faith in Him. All we must do is respond. Yet many pass through this short life of 75 years and never allow trust to bring them to salvation.
So they move on to oblivion. They come to the end of their probationary lifetime, dissolve into dust, and pass on into eternity, lost. They stayed too busy for God. They never allowed the abundance of evidence of His love to enter their consciousness and to transform them. Their world never attained the beauty and sparkle of a life filled with a knowledge of Him. His Spirit was never able to open their blind eyes to behold all the glory that surrounds them in the garden of Eden He had given them.
“But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Jn. 1:12,13).
Whoever it is that responds to the wooing of the Spirit of God, and follows up on that still, small voice which calls that one to get acquainted with One of loving righteousness and unfaltering faithfulness, then, like the egg that gets penetrated by the father’s cell, the soul will come to life. It will find Someone who is perfectly trustworthy, a Friend who is ever dependable.
A new life begins, complete with new purposes and a new capacity to love and to know God. Conversion is a mystery to the all those dead in sin, but its a living reality to anyone who has experienced it. The world takes on a whole different character; beauty is everywhere. The Bible is seen through completely different glasses; the mercy and justice of God is all love. We have a new ability to discern His purposes of love in all His acts, whether soft or severe, and its all good. We see His hand of wise and loving judgment in every event in sacred history as well as in this life.
We are born again, and this time, complete in Him. And we are bound for a incomprehensibly fuller, endless life.
An egg comes into being deep within the female ovary. All the parts and mechanisms that form that egg manufacture an insipid, inactive body that has the potential for human life. The egg is not the human life, but only the potential for it. Once produced, the egg moves down the fallopian tube, on its way to oblivion. I say oblivion, because after a week or two, before it reaches its destination, it just breaks up and is washed out of the mother’s reproductive system.
But if it is met by the father’s cells, a whole different scenario occurs. The most lively, the strongest and fastest of his reproductive cells, is the first to reach the egg, and penetrates the cloud of nursing cells and the outer membrane. It transfers all its energy and predesigned reproductive burden into the egg, and the egg is never, ever again the same.
From a lifeless, sleeping machine, the egg wakes up from an otherwise short trip down a 12 inch tube, to begin a long journey far from the mother-host, a journey that will last many, many decades, in a body full of life and intelligence, so inconceivably beyond the dead thing it was in its unregenerated state. No longer cold and lifeless, it is a moving, multiplying zygote; the embryonic machinery of intelligent life. It will take months of slow, unconscious development, but the process goes on. All the factors that are needed come into play in a daily ongoing way.
Only the mother knows what’s happening. Long before baby comes forth, she is intimately acquainted with it. While baby is oblivious to the life changing epoch taking place, life is nonetheless changing for it, and mother is aware of it all, moment by moment monitoring its growth, and living in anticipation and excitement.
Finally, baby is ready for introduction into the big world. Still weak and heavily dependent on mother, the time has come to leave its warm, perfectly comfortable womb which has become the only home it knows. It has no choice to stay. Regardless of how much it desires that old life, God refuses to allow it. For its own and its mother’s good, it must leave. Life has its benefits and also it’s demands.
Into the new world comes little baby. Still nursed along, though differently from before, it moves into a new stage of quasi-self-support. Mother is perfect for this transition for baby; she is fitted with the tools needed for baby’s survival in its new life. She is soft, she is warm, and her voice is higher pitched to suit baby’s tiny ear drums; yet she is knowledgeable in life and caretaking. She supplements for baby what baby can’t do for itself.
So baby survives birth into this world. Baby has three basic entities to its being—physical, intellectual, and spiritual—all woven or entangled together. So interconnected are these three that their points of division is unobservable, yet those connections are recognized to exist. Any one entity of the three cannot function properly without the healthy operation of the others.
Each of the three faculties begins to develop at different stages during baby’s existence. First is the physical aspect. From the very beginning, the body busily grows, even while the mind is still waking up. Then we see the intelligence come to life. Observation skills and memory awaken as the body continues to grow and develop, and the brain emerges from its dormancy.
Last of the three attributes to come to life is the soul—the seat of trust and love. Love and trust cannot exist without a functioning mind that can appreciate love and the many gifts in the world. And neither mind nor soul can perform without the energy coming from a healthy and rested body. All three work together to make the active, alert, and happy human being.
But the soul is not complete if it simply lives with the animal kingdom. Animals cannot provide the full requirement of the human’s deepest desire for love. And neither is the human spirit completely fulfilled with trust and love only for another human being. This is true because the trust is resting in something that is not perfectly and ever trustworthy and loving. For some sooner, for others later, the human heart is disappointed and hurt by those it has come to hope in.
Another discrepancy in the soul is within itself. It is born weakened by sin; it is naturally self-centered. It is not born naturally connected with God, and it develops separate from His love. So there exists an inherent source of irritation, a lack that is not filled, disturbing the development and the health of the mind and the body. If the connection with it’s Creator is not perfectly restored, death of the soul will result, and then of the mind and body.
We are like the egg that is born in the ovary and which comes floating down the fallopian tube. We are born and destined to oblivion. While the egg remains as it was at birth, untouched, undisturbed, unawakened by the sperm, it is destined to break apart and be washed away as if it never existed. In that process we see the justice and mercy of God. The ungerminated egg had no capacity for human life, therefore it was allowed to go its way and come to nothing. It attempted nothing, and produced nothing.
We come into this world with all the machinery we need to glorify our Creator—an amazing human body, complete with an amazing intellect. What more could God give us to come into the closest bond with Him? But we must make the choice to get to Him. He almost suffocates us with Himself by way of so many gifts that should wisk us into faith in Him. All we must do is respond. Yet many pass through this short life of 75 years and never allow trust to bring them to salvation.
So they move on to oblivion. They come to the end of their probationary lifetime, dissolve into dust, and pass on into eternity, lost. They stayed too busy for God. They never allowed the abundance of evidence of His love to enter their consciousness and to transform them. Their world never attained the beauty and sparkle of a life filled with a knowledge of Him. His Spirit was never able to open their blind eyes to behold all the glory that surrounds them in the garden of Eden He had given them.
“But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Jn. 1:12,13).
Whoever it is that responds to the wooing of the Spirit of God, and follows up on that still, small voice which calls that one to get acquainted with One of loving righteousness and unfaltering faithfulness, then, like the egg that gets penetrated by the father’s cell, the soul will come to life. It will find Someone who is perfectly trustworthy, a Friend who is ever dependable.
A new life begins, complete with new purposes and a new capacity to love and to know God. Conversion is a mystery to the all those dead in sin, but its a living reality to anyone who has experienced it. The world takes on a whole different character; beauty is everywhere. The Bible is seen through completely different glasses; the mercy and justice of God is all love. We have a new ability to discern His purposes of love in all His acts, whether soft or severe, and its all good. We see His hand of wise and loving judgment in every event in sacred history as well as in this life.
We are born again, and this time, complete in Him. And we are bound for a incomprehensibly fuller, endless life.
posted by David | 3:58 AM
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