What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?
I haven’t commuted in a long time but I can remember sitting in a crowded train carriage on murky grey mornings with other sleepy commuters absorbed by their phones. The train would weave its way passed countless flats and sub-divided maisonettes as it pulled into one of the busiest train stations in London. And as it did so, I remember the unmistakeably delicious smell of toasting bread. People were making breakfast.
London is grey. The sky is grey. The concrete beneath our shoes is grey. The trains creak and the bridges are grimy. Sometimes for all our busyness it feels like colour and life is being squeezed out and mixed into murky dull tones in the puddles on the street.
And then there is that smell of toast.
People say that if you don’t believe in God, how do you explain bacon sandwiches?
Despite all our technological advances, we cannot create life. We know the depth of it, but we at times take it for granted. We know the pain of loneliness, how growing old is hard. We know how fragile it is. Something tells us this was not how it was supposed to be. We enjoy simple comforts – the richness and joy and delight of it. We do know that despite everything, life is precious.
One of the very first commandments given was to preserve life “…for on the day you eat of [one particular tree in Eden], you will certainly die.” That command wasn’t followed and since then there has been that squeeze, that downward pull of grey. Yet even though that command was broken, God wants things to go well for us and for us to have a long life.
There are certainly things worth dying for. After all, the man who affected the greatest change in history lived a relatively short life. Now wherever we go in the world, if we see a cross we are reminded of that.
But we are also reminded that the purpose of that death was life. He loved us so much that he himself came, and by living his beautifully good life, then dying and rising again, brought the life we lost so long ago, the life of colour, the life without that downward pull.
Life that overcomes death.
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live.”
John 11:25
Genesis 2:17, Ephesians 6:3
#bloganuary
Green Olive Tree 
Wow. This was a beautifully written answer to your thoughts on long life. I liked imagining you on a train and the look of surprise on your face when you could smell buttered toast.
It often catches me off guard that Im 13 years older than Jesus. God saved Him from aging. Jesus doesn’t have to experience losing his eyesight, His knees creaking when He gets up or the menagerie of medical issues we become burdened with as we get older. Jesus lived to the prime of His life. He suffered immeasurably for us but I like your reminder that Jesus died relatively young.
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