Cylcles Of Life

Lately I have been able to spend a lot more time out in the woods or walking out on our road and I have started to notice some things that for reasons that are lost on me that I had never noticed before. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t see these things, it was just that I hadn’t really understood what it was that I was seeing, it wasn’t until I opened up my mind to see that I really started to get a grasp of what it was right before my eyes.

What I have seen, played out before my eyes for years, is that life renews itself after death. Go take a walk in the deep woods and take a serious hard look at a fallen tree or a stump and look at the life coming from it. You will find everything from moss and lichens to mushrooms and, in many cases, you will find new trees growing out of the stumps of the old. Life coming from what we would consider to be dead.

What does that say about us? We who have the breath of God living within us? Do we simply die and rot away in the ground and all that is a part of us disappears? Or is their more to it then we think?

Just about every religion that I have heard of share two things in common; one is that there is a big change coming in the not so far distant future, a subject for a separate post, and the second is that there is something beyond this life. If you’re a Christian you likely refer to it as heaven, if you’re a Jew it’s likely to have something to do with the messianic kingdom or if you’re a Hindu it’s likely to be some sort of re-incarnation, no matter what you wish to call it, it all boils down to that there is something after this life and nature shows it to us day after day.

There is a school of thought that I subscribe to, that suggests our lives repeat themselves until we have learned the lessons that we need to learn. I don’t mean that as soon as I die the clock rewinds for me and I go back to 19-- and start over, no, I believe that we are reborn as different people but we retain some of the knowledge, through our spirit, that we have taken from this life and as we interact with the same people, the same souls if you will, that we have interacted with in this life, we relearn and grow as in our previous lives and times. I don’t have any proof of this mind you; I can’t pull out some sort of theological study or scientific publication to prove this. I can only offer a couple of ideas as to why I think this way.

First is the above mentioned cycle of life that you can see in nature, the cycles of the moon, the seasons, life and death in nature. The second is not so concrete; dreams. I have had dreams that have been so real, so vivid and detailed that when I woke up I was disorientated as to what was actually real. I have seen through the eyes of people that I don’t remember and yet in the dreams I knew who I was and who all those around me were. One dream in particular I was in a battle during the American revolution and I was running with a group of other men and we were crossing a bridge, just as we got to the other side there was an explosion from a cannon ball and I was knocked down to the ground. The last thing I remember was faces looking down on me as everything fades to black. Then there was one dream that I had that I was getting ready for work as a nurse, I am assuming based on the clothes, and as I looked into the mirror the face looking back at me was my face but with long red hair and freckles but the real surprise for me came when I went to a battlefield and realized that this was the place that I had seen in my dream. I had never been there before so I had no way of knowing what it looked like and yet it was like I had just walked back into my dream. Are these proofs that I had been there before in a past life? No, but it’s very compelling.

My last reason has to do with people. Have you ever had the experience of meeting with someone for the very first time but feeling like you have known them your entire life? Or you’re certain that you know them from somewhere but as you compare notes you realize that it’s not likely? Or you meet certain people and you just immediately click? Why is that? I would humbly submit to you that it’s because of the spirit of God living in us points you to those that you have been with in past lives or times and so your spirit knows them even when your mind has forgotten.

Some will argue that this is not theologically sound, that’s OK, but let me ask you a question; if it’s the breath of life that comes from God that gives us life in the first place, where does that breath of life go? If God is eternal and He is spirit than I would submit to you that this breath of life or spirit of God goes back to Him and He does what He wants with it. Yes our bodies die but if nature is any example to us than I can see where our lives are renewed and we begin again.

Just my own humble opinion. Shalom