I just brought home a couple of flats of bedding plants. Visiting a garden center is like visiting a hardware store; you're buying yourself work. Still, there's pleasure in transplanting petunias, marigolds, impatiens and other assorted annuals knowing that they'll be filling their appointed places with color in no time at all.

I haven't received a letter from you since I sent my last one where I shared some thoughts on why I believe miracles are possible. I hope you don't mind my writing without first hearing from you, but I wanted to add some thoughts on one of the greatest miracles of all: life after death.

Life after death certainly can be classified as a miracle, because it's beyond known laws of nature. Can I, or anybody else for that matter, prove the existence of life beyond the grave? No, at least not by any demonstration or experiment. People have had what are called near death experiences where they claim to have gone to the other side and back again. I'm not saying these experiences aren't real, but I'll have to admit to a high degree of skepticism. I wouldn't want to base my hope for heaven on such scattered accounts. Because the exit doorway from this life swings only one way, we have no one to come back and tell us what it's like. It's beyond our current experience.

Still, I'm convinced we can believe in life after death for several reasons. First, it's a universal belief among people of all time and all places. Virtually every culture has some kind of belief in life beyond death. We have eternity in our hearts. And just as we have a thirst for water and have water to drink, and have a hunger for food and have food to eat, so, the argument goes, the desire for eternal life is a clue that life beyond the grave is a reality.

Another clue for the existence of life after death is the nearly universal belief in the soul. The soul has always been seen as the essential, core identity of who we are. But the soul is something that's not physical; it's the part of us that can survive death and live on.

The best evidence for a life beyond this one comes from Jesus. We've already considered the historical fact of His resurrection, that He came back to life after being dead three days. His bold affirmation was that because He lives, we can also live! There's no missing the fact that many of His teachings had an eternal perspective to them; He was looking at life from a vantage point beyond the normal lifespan.

It makes sense that a God of love would want to love us forever. It would be cruel for God to make disposable people that would wear out their usefulness to Him after a short lifespan of something under a hundred years.

As to what this next life will be like, we don't have a lot of information. We do know that Jesus made it clear that it's this life that determines where we spend our eternal existence: with Him or apart from Him. But that's another letter. I need to start transplanting the flowers I just bought. I have a tendency to put off that task for days, until the plants are severely root bound or dried out from lack of water. Not this year!



A fellow seeker after truth,
Dave