Ageing with the grace of God in a world untainted by sin

MY DAUGHTER was really excited about the middle of October because it marked exactly seven and a half years since she was born. Quarters and halves of years are very important to a child.

They are excited by the transition from one age to the next. Each day and month along the way is significant, marking the changes, growth, and developments of that year.

When her eighth birthday finally does come around she will not be the same girl that entered into her seventh year. She will have learned and grown and changed in so many ways through all the things she has experienced in those 365 days between seven and eight.

The tiny daily changes are so

By Shirley Morgan

gradual and imperceptible to her parents who see her everyday. It’s only when a relative who hasn’t seen her for a long time, remarks on how much she’s grown, or find she is outgrowing her clothes and shoes very frequently that we look again and notice her transitioning from one age to the next. Our Gospel passage and Old Testament reading remind us of the many differences and changes that can separate one age from the next. In the Gospel, Jesus divides humanity’s history into two ages.

This Age, and that Age, and he describes some of the major differences between the two.

The Sadducees – students of a particular Jewish school of learning – did not believe in a resurrection.

They believed that once you were dead, that was it. So, the question they asked Jesus was really a riddle to mock the idea that someone could rise from the dead.

If a woman married multiple husbands because each one she married tragically died shortly after the wedding, and then she eventually dies herself, whose wife will she be in the afterlife? Would she be a bigamist?

Jesus wasn’t phased by their question. He tells them the Resurrection Age, the Age that will follow this one, is completely different. In the Age that is to come there will be a new humanity. Humans that are reborn with a sin-free nature, humans that are children of God.

In this Fallen Age there is heartache and death. In the Resurrection Age there is eternal life and no tragedy. Jesus tells them that resurrection from the dead isn’t just simply coming back to your life as it was before, it is being reborn into a new body, in a new creation, in a new world that runs by different rules to this one.

The Resurrection Age will be inhabited by a new sanctified humanity living in perfect relationship with God – in a new world untainted by sin and decay.

God the Father loves us and wants to comfort our hearts and strengthen us in every good work. So, despite the struggles we face in this age, let us pray that God will continue to empower us to love and live like Him; to do good to those who hurt us and share the Good News of the Kingdom with everyone who hasn’t heard it. So that we can live faithfully as His Children in this Age and the Age to come.