To listen to the audio of this post, follow the link.
As a hospice nurse, I was at the bedside of many who transitioned out of their bodies. I was their midwife, helping them endure any suffering that came from the labor of producing a new body.
And when it was done, I often sat at the bedside and tried to process what had just happened.
David said,
“All the days ordained for me were written in Your Book before one of them came to be.”
Psalm 139:16
So in many ways, I felt God gently closing that volume of a book. I thought of all the chapters that were written from the baby’s first cry to the sacred moment of passing I had just witnessed.
Earth work completed. Suffering ended. And new life begun.
But unlike the midwife, who sees the baby, I was not able to see exactly what the new life looked like.
I wondered what will our new bodies look like?
Paul gives us some clues.
He said,
“What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.
When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else.
But God gives it a body as He has determined, and to each kind of seed He gives its own body.
Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.
There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another.
The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.
So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable;
it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory;
it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power;
it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”
1 Corinthians 15:36-44
I believe each of us gets their own trumpet call at the moment of our promotion. Paul describes it this way.
“Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.”
1 Corinthians 15:51-53
But my ever curious mind says, “Changed into what? What will we look like?”
Both Paul and John answer that in the same way.
Paul said,
“And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man (Adam), so shall we bear the image of The Heavenly Man (Jesus).”
1 Corinthians 15:49
John said,
“Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
1 John 3:2
Paul said,
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then Face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
1 Corinthians 13:12
In that moment of what earth people call death, heavenly people will rejoice as our veil is lifted.
Paul said,
“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding The Glory of The Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of Glory to another. For this comes from The Lord Who is The Spirit.”
2 Corinthians 3:18
And that is what our resurrection body will be!
