You Are A Soul
“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” C.S. Lewis
I thought about this quote earlier this week as I was drinking my pre-coffee coffee. Yes...you read that right ;) Judah has been a late night (or is it really early?!) party animal recently and I’ve been running on fumes and a prayer. -But- “I’m not a tired woman. I’m momma. A momma who loves her boy.”
Motherhood has taught me so much about sacrifice-the biggest being my physical comfort. Whether the seemingly endless “morning” sickness I endured during the first trimester, back labor that was thankfully short lived due to the miracle epidural, to now sleepless nights. But thank God, my physical body is not where my Spirit stops. I have a Hope that transcends and strengthens beyond all the comforts combined that this Earth has to offer me.
The body, while beautiful in function and form, also has a very brutal aspect to it. It is caught up in the war of good vs evil. Many being touched by cancer, chronic diseases, tragic events. We feel its vulnerabilities in ourselves and the ones we love around us on a regular basis. The weight of it can be crushing if we allow ourselves to fixate on it.
I once read that C.S. Lewis described us as currently living in the Shadowlands-that this world is just a shadow of the world to come. I think if everyone were being true, we’d admit that we ache for something more than just what this mortal life has to offer. The mind, body, and soul naturally decays when left to its own devices, and even more so, we heap abuse on top of that. This leads many to a very cynical (at best) to nihilistic (at worst) view of our time here on this Earth. But we also have a choice to believe it is a call for Hope in something greater than ourselves. As Lewis states, if we were made with no purpose or happened on accident, how would we have ever found out? In other words, if that were the truth, we’d all be living our lives blissfully ignorant.
2 Corinthians 5:1-4 states; “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”
Our groaning will be forgotten when one day we are fully restored to His glory. May we live in that truth every moment of our short Earthly lives.