No One Is Dead

This isn’t about Nelson Mandela. It’s not even about Christmas.

It’s about the fact that no one has ever died.

None.
Everyone is alive.

Specifically, every soul is alive. 

Think about it.

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This truth struck me a couple of months ago while I mused on how many people have lived on earth since the beginning of time: How many people have there been, ever? 

Any answer depends on how long ago one believes the earth came into existence, but most estimates are in the billions. Billions of people, I thought. All…alive.

Once conceived, we’re forever alive. Of course our bodies die, but we don't. We will live forever.

As with Hubble’s Law that the universe is constantly expanding, the number of souls in existence is ever-expanding, ever growing bigger. No created soul is ever un-created.

Spacey, I know. But this isn't some late Halloween-themed post. And it isn't particularly a Christmasey one, either.

In Matthew 25, Jesus talks about a future time when “all the nations will be gathered before Him” for a time of reckoning (25:32, italics mine). After all people are called to account, Jesus makes the statement that people will “go away into [either] eternal punishment [or] eternal life” (25:46). Eternal. Even people who have died earthly deaths are still alive in another form. Earth is just a temporary stop that the real "us"--the essence of who we are--makes before arriving at our eternal destiny.

This thought struck me again afresh yesterday as I read 2 Corinthians 5:10: “For we must all appear before the tribunal of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or worthless.” We’ll be repaid according to how we lived when we were encased in bodies. It reminded me that the human body is a "form" of us but is not the real us. 

The first 15 verses of 2 Corinthians chapter 5 in the Holman Christian Standard Bible are under the heading “Our Future After Death.” The New American Standard Bible refers to the whole chapter as “The Temporal and Eternal.” Everyone has a future after death. Everyone is eternal.

It's not that I never understood this until recently; I first comprehended the idea of life-after-death roughly twenty years ago. It's just that not until recently did I grasp more of its implications.

This epiphany has taken on new meaning since I moved to Russia.

On one hand, this life-ing realization is timely because in St. Petersburg I am surrounded by more people than I ever have been in my life. I love living on a busy street in the 4th largest city in Europe. I brush shoulders with hundreds if not thousands of people a day, depending on where I’m going. These conditions thrill the heart of a people-person such as me, one who doesn't mind traffic or crowds because she loves the sense of vibrancy and energy that come from a high volume of people. I couldn't ask for a more ideal living situation at this phase in my adulthood. I am consistently bombarded with life. 

This is the metro across from my apartment which daily attracts at least this many people during rush hour.

But on the other hand, I feel as though I’m around less life than I ever have been. You see, the realization that life is continually expanding is a thought that flies in the face of a “closed” culture such as in Russia. Only 22 years after the Soviet Regime, Russians on the whole are not accustomed “open” mannerisms such as those practiced in western cultures. 

I understand that Russians are not as abrupt or unfriendly as they seem to outsiders from “warmer” cultures; they simply have different cultural expressions. Russian professor and blogger Eugenia Vlasova explains that “people smiling at you in the USA…do not mean anything other than an overall neutral attitude toward you[;] […] By contrast, in Russia, no smile is a sign of a neutral politeness, [but] a smile is always informative.” 

I understand that the same meaning is expressed in two entirely different ways by two cultures, but there is something to be said for a national with a history different from, often darker than, and with more unreached people groups than the USA. A smile, especially in Soviet times, always carried meaning. It sometimes meant that someone knew something about you, and it could be more sinister than sincere. 

Hand-in-hand with the lack of smiles is the lack of eye-contact. Of course, this partly comes with living in a big city: people don’t have the time or ability to acknowledge and wave at others like they do in small-town Montana, where I’ve grown up. Here, in packed metro cars, sandwiched between two people with not even enough room to take my hands out of my coat pockets, I look around and see that none of the people are making eye contact with one another. We are mere inches away from each other’s faces but are staring in opposing directions (Then again, with people that close, it may be a little weird to make eye-contact. ;) ). But even in un-crowded metro cars, eye-contacts are few and far between. 

I've found that simply being in close proximity with other people does not equate to a feeling of liveliness. In fact, it shoots holes in the life of community God designed for us—holes through which death seeps in.

It’s not simply the lack of eye-contact or upturned lips that expresses a death-in-life; it’s the darker history that plays into these.

The Soviet Union replaced the Russian Empire in 1922. Before that time, the Russian Orthodox Church was closely linked with the State in terms of power and status. In a move to eliminate religious influence, the Communist party officially eliminated religion from national life and replaced it with atheism. Though technically the right to believe was never officially outlawed, the Soviet regime’s religious policy was to obliterate religious institutions and ideas and to enforce such a stance with harsh legal penalties.

After Hitler’s invasion of the USSR in 1941, some churches were reopened. But in the 1950s under Kruschev, anti-religious persecution took its second wind. Persecution waned in the 60s and drew new strength in the 70s, but in the 80s Gorbachev started returning church buildings to the Church for religious purposes. Missionaries have only been allowed in Russia in roughly the past two decades.

I can’t speak for Mother Russia’s beginnings—I don’t know how much more open people were before the Soviet regime came, and I’m not saying that the sole or even main reason for Russian’s closed-ness was the intense religious persecution during the Communist era. Being a foreigner myself, it’s often hard for me to distinguish between what is culturally instinctive to Russians and what has been imposed on Russians in the past half-century which they’ve now absorbed into their cultural framework. But I do understand some of the imprints that Communism has left on Russia’s historical landscape.

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When people don't look each other in the eye, the few exceptions suddenly become anomalies, and I, confessedly a natural stare-er, don't want to attract unnecessary attention as a young, single girl living in the middle of a big city. So, partly for self-preservation, I don't unbridledly stare at others. Passing by throngs of people every day on the way to school, church, or the grocery store, it's easy for me to develop a type of callousness as I navigate through my daily activities. I can move about my day with such a frame of mind as if I'm not really seeing other people. But if I'm not acknowledging others' existence, am I remembering that I am brushing shoulders with eternal beings? 

C. S. Lewis was also captured by the epiphany of the eternal, and he exhorts us to recognize the everlasting in each one of us: "There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors" (Lewis, The Weight of Glory).

Sometimes I scare myself when I wonder if I'm letting culture deaden me to the fact that I'm surrounded by life: Okay, I’m surrounded by immortality. So what?

I fear growing accustomed to staring at traffic lights rather than the humans they direct.

Well, “[f]rom now on, then, we do not know anyone in a purely human way” (2 Corinthians 5:16). Up until this point, the Apostle Paul has explained that everyone has a certain future after death and that our bodies are only a temporary housing for the us that lives forever. He explains that the bodily state “groans,” is “burdened,” and is prepared to “be swallowed up by life” (v. 4). 

Russia is unlike any other country I’ve ever experienced. In its wake, fallen communism left the biggest nation in the world in need of seeing grace, unconditional love, and leadership by servanthood—concepts foreign to the majority of Russia’s history—lived out. 

But I guess if they haven’t seen it demonstrated, it’s a little hard for them to start practicing it on their own.

May we never know people in a merely “purely human way,” as means to an end, as machinery, as just more faces in the crowd. May we never mistake functionality for personhood. God prepared for all of us eternal beings “an eternal dwelling in the heavens,” (2 Corinthians 5:1) and living without that knowledge will leave us never fully confident and never fully satisfied (5:8). 

When I see thousands of downturned faces, I am reminded that our bodily shells look as hollow as they truly are on the inside when they're not illuminated by Christ. 

Open your eyes to the life all around you. Stare it in the face. Don't pass it by on your way to do something else. 

Recognize that life is your mission, and you deal with immortals. We all pass on from earth, but we don't die. 

No one.

Ever.

Recognizing the eternal,

Renée

From Cave to Rainforest

I keep it a secret. At most, I’ve only shared it with a select few under special circumstances. 

Well-seasoned travelers hate this fact about me, and people who don’t fly overseas won’t understand the implications of what I’m about to confess:

Jet lag has never affected me.

And to my knowledge, it never has. I cannot offer a satisfactory or scientifically appropriate explanation for this. When I go to bed after a long trans-ocean flight, I wake up the next morning at the same time as usual and go through my day normally. When I lie down, I don’t wake up at odd times and crave dinner at 3 in the morning. I’m not sleepless at 5 a.m., and I don’t drift off at one in the afternoon. My sleep cycle has never unraveled after traveling across the world.

Knock on wood.

On the flip side, though, some things do wake me up whether I fly or not. Normal things like light and loud noises and dogs.

Barking ones. 

I landed in St. Petersburg at midnight on Saturday, August 10^th. A concrete menagerie, the city shimmered in the darkness, streetlights glimmering off the windows of high-rise buildings. I went to bed and woke up the following morning full of fight for adjusting to another culture. I slept and rose according to normal patterns for the next two days until Tuesday morning when I heard a dog, seven stories below, barking his heart out at a dear 5:56 AM.

My plans for sleeping ‘til 7:30 were shot.

Refusing to start my day early, I lay awake with my eyes closed, stubbornly trying to put myself back to sleep against the din reverberating up the asphalt and through my closed window. I tried doing what I usually do to fall asleep: I started weaving a line of thought that eventually takes off on its own, seeping back into dreams. And the first thing that came to my mind was to imagine that I was constructing a butterfly garden.

I don’t have a philosophical reason for this; it was six in the morning. I just imagined constructing a butterfly garden, okay?

Okay.

I pictured a dome-shaped building. The “ceiling,” as it were, was letting light in—at first. But I realized that the scope of my big-ceilinged plan would require mass amounts of glass (and money), so I cut it down. I knew I wanted a glass-lined, flower-covered paradise, but I didn’t think that I could actualize my spacious and elaborate goals, so I reduced and modified everything. After all, I’m no architect. My thoughts waxed dream-like, and I could see my butterfly garden taking shape. And I didn’t like it.

(I’ll pause here before the following description and concede that in my between-sleep-and-waking state, things don’t always add up.)

It was confined to one room. The walls, instead of glass or netting, were concrete, and pale-green paint was being slathered from bottom to top. The colors mimicked the nature outside, as if speaking to great hopes, but the interior was cramped and unnatural. There were a few butterflies and creeping vines, but the impression I got from my handiwork was that the structure which was supposed to be filled with life actually seemed to be threatening the life inside. It looked more like a cave than a garden.

Then a voice spoke behind of me.

That’s yours, I heard God say. But here’s Mine.

And I turned around to face thin clouds misting my view. As they cleared, I saw that I was standing on the edge of a cliff, in front of a mountain chain that encircled a valley. It was a bowl of earth, miles across, and I peered down into it to find that it that swelled with motion—butterflies. It looked like a temperate rainforest—trees formed the canopy that tinted the mountainside deep green. A waterfall flowed from the highest peak into the valley, and this earth-bowl overwhelmed me with joy. So much for my plans for making some ceiling-ed structure measuring a few square feet across; God gave me a chunk of a continent.

This is what I have in mind, He said.

By this point I was fully awake. I opened my eyes and sat up, light pouring into my bedroom window. The dog had stopped barking.

“God,” I whispered aloud, dream-images fresh in my mind, “why do I sell myself short?”

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I think it’s safe to say that you were expecting a blog about my first weeks in Russia, not about my dreaming habits.

But that’s exactly what this is. The theme of my past twenty-nine days in Russia has been expectations. From the cave to the rainforest, from my pre-conceptions to His, I’ve filled myself with expectations. Expectations which have been exceeded.

I debated on choosing a less-catchy, more-cliché title for this entry, and had I done so, it would have been “Great Expectations.” Or maybe “Low Expectations.” Because during my almost-a-month I’ve spent here, God has consistently surpassed my expectations.

And in the three arenas which occupy my time most here in Russia, God has severely and profoundly challenged my expectations of Him: in the city, in the school, and in the church.

In the City.

My second day in Russia was a Sunday, and I accompanied my roommate from the island on which we live to the mainland via metro for church. Saint Petersburg has the deepest metro system in the world, and any escalator going into or out of a metro station can give you a ride for up to three minutes. It’s so deep because certain lines cross under rivers and most go under canals. Growing up in Montana, I never took public transportation, so every chance I’ve had to use it (mainly on missions trips) thrills me. I was always with a group of people, and I didn’t have to worry about where I was going; quite literally, I was along for the ride. But that Sunday when my roommate needed to leave church before I did, I was responsible for getting myself home. I racked my brain to recall every street name and intersection we passed on the way to church and tried reversing them so I could navigate my way home. As church waned on, reality settled over me: I knew no one at church, I had a faint grasp on the language, I was not wearing a watch, my visa wasn’t registered, and my phone was not working. I realized that I was the most alone I had ever been in my life. I had no backup plan and no way of reaching anyone. The Raatzes hadn’t arrived in Russia yet, and all I had were metro coins, an apartment key, and a shaky sense of direction. Growing up in a mountain-rimmed town, I’ve always been able to navigate by looking up to where earth meets sky. Now, in the heart of a city of 5 million people where skyscrapers block the sky above and stamp out my sense of the cardinal directions, I am disoriented. At the end of the service, the worship team played “Lead Me To the Cross.” Can’t we sing about something a little more tangible, a little more earthly? My thoughts raced. God, before the cross, can You just lead me to my apartment?! As my sense of isolation peaked, I felt the Lord speak to my heart: What do you expect Me to do? Will I leave you? I poured out my love for you at the cross. I stood and sang with a new abandon: Rid me of myself; I belong to You. God, You are all I have. Yes, lead me literally home, but more importantly, lead me to You.

In the School.

The smell of old books rose to my nostrils as I picked up the pile of paperbacks that spilled out of my arms—again. Stacking as many as I could, I was carrying load after load of middle school-age novels from the 2^nd to the 3^rd floor of the renovated Estonian monastery, now the International Academy of St. Petersburg, in preparation for the first day of school. The staff of missionaries and Russian nationals had been unbelievably friendly, and in-service training had actually been fun; now the real work began. Crafting curriculum with little more than the books I hauled up the stairs for 6^th grade English and Geography students, the majority of whom are English Language Learners, I thought back to my practicum experience in college and wondered if I was really cut out for managing two of the four core classes for middle school. I had syllabi to write, class rules to procure, and course schedules to create. I could tell from the first day I entered the school that I was given a task that demanded more than my experience had exacted from me. Without a blueprint to follow, I was given leeway to create coursework for this academic year in any manner I pleased. And the multiplicity of opportunities overwhelmed me. I thought of a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: “With great freedom comes great responsibility.” Thanks, Ellie, I chaffed. The freedom was stultifying; I expected to come to the school to fill someone else’s shoes, not to create my own. And God said, “Look at the opportunities I’ve given you to gain teaching experience. You don’t get to parrot someone else’s lesson plans; you get to start from square one and take part in the school’s new era as it takes a step forward.” I picked up my book pile and set it on the table in front of me. God, You’re giving me a teaching position that demands everything. Thank You for promising to be with me in more than I bargained for.

In the Church.

Nancy Valnes, Nancy Raatz, and I (all members of the AGWM team here in Russia) after being welcomed to Nehemiah Church in St. Petersburg.

“And now I’m going to let Renée introduce herself,” he said, and pointed the microphone in my direction. After finishing his welcome address to the Russian Church, Andy Raatz beckoned me out of my seat and to the front of the room. So much for forewarning, I thought. I stood and walked forward, my head was still swimming with the Russian words I tried to decipher on the PowerPoint slides during worship. Small but power-packed, Nehemiah Church is vibrant. All three Sundays I’d attended at that point had been teeming with passionate worshipers, and now it was my turn to tell the congregation who I am and why I’m in Russia. I came here with hopes of being involved on a worship team or in a Bible study or with a young adult group. Now I had to stand and choose whether I was going to spout my expectations for service or bestow a benediction. God said, Get ready, because being involved in church in Russia isn’t what you think it will be. I opened my mouth to say that I missed Russia since visiting in April and wanted to be a blessing to the local church. What came out was choppy, punctuated with my own laughter, and I wondered if it was any indication of what to expect in the coming months. God, I want this time at Nehemiah Church to be marked by Your blessing, not my forcing of my plans into a mold that doesn’t fit.

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In case you didn’t notice, I left all three scenarios with hanging endings. Intentionally.

Why? Because the physical outcome of our trust isn’t nearly as important as the One in whom we place it. 

Through whatever would have happened in each scenario, I would have been okay because of the One in whom my expectations were placed. Each time I despaired in my outlook, the Lord reminded me of who He is. And I trust in God, so why should I be afraid? What can mere mortals do to me (Psalm 56:11)?

But I’ll have you know that yes, I maneuvered my way home from the metro the first time without a hitch. And since then, I’ve been navigating all over the city, with many first-times and no I-got-losts. I cross paths with people who give me directions, I run into people I know who are also traveling in my direction, and I sharpen my map-reading skills weekly.

And school is moving along swimmingly as Lord affirms my giftings and helps me coordinate lesson minutiae between long-term plans and short-term goals. My un-morning self revives as eager sixth graders shuffle into the classroom, telling me about the landscape of Korea, begging for no homework, and rapping about biblical heroes.  I’m summiting mountains of papers to be graded and walking through valleys with students who struggle with language and only want to be back in their home country. The freedom I have at school is no longer a deadening vastness but a bright-rimmed opportunity to live the message of Jesus out loud before ten shining pairs of eyes.

And with church, the week after I gave my self-introduction at church, I was in the basement of an old Lutheran church for Nehemiah Church’s young adult service, trying to sing along to Russian worship songs I didn’t know, issuing from an acoustic guitar. Later that night found me standing on Nevsky Prospect, the main thoroughfare in St. Petersburg, handing out evangelistic newspapers late into the evening.

Having started this blog entry three weeks ago, I’ve been struggling to finish it because each day contains something I want to add to it. The tension between wanting to share all that God is teaching me by recounting miraculous experiences and wanting to eke out some type of update, regardless of how incomplete, about my first days in Russia has simmered within me to the boiling point. I’ve decided to share something now instead of waiting any longer. I can’t hold it in anymore; I feel like I’m standing at the edge of the rainforest and shouting, “He has been good to me!” (Psalm 13:6) “He is good and He does good!” (Psalm 119:68)

God is showing me that truly justified expectations are more qualitative than quantitative. Our trust and peace can be settled before we see the outcome of events because of the One in whom we place our trust.

William Carey, the father of modern missions and missionary to India, had the following motto which echoes in my head when I look out over the Russian horizon from my apartment window each daybreak: “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God!”

Carey sheds light on a spiritual insight: our expectations can be big because they are focused on God, not on ourselves.

You can never have too high of expectations when it comes to God. And when you start putting your expectations in God, your expectations and outlook become centered on God and not on your circumstances. It’s not about whether or not a situation “goes well;” it’s about whether or not God is reigning in your heart through all stages of that situation.

When I say my expectations have been exceeded, I’m not saying that everything has gone perfectly. I’m saying that God has come through in ways that have broadened my knowledge of Him and strengthened my trust in His providence in undeniable and unshakeable ways.

Sometimes, though, we create low expectations—with good intentions, mind you, but we’re just trying to be realistic. Sin has long invaded the world. And we settle.

Why do we do that?

Why do we pray for greatness and plan for meagerness? Why do we say we hope that things go well and then grit our teeth for the pain or mediocrity we actually expect to be the reality of our situations?

In my dream, why did I want a biome and then construct a cave? It was sealed off from reality, and it was afraid of expanding, afraid to be too big and let too much life in— because with an influx of life comes an influx of responsibility, and how could one tiny garden sustain all of that? Or rather, how could one person sustain all that?

I’m not issuing a call to discount any possibility of things going awry, and I’m not encouraging people to hope for sunny days or easy roads to the point of being unprepared if anything less than ideal should happen.

I’m issuing a call to probe the depths of our trust. May our plans and our outlook be based more on an understanding of Him than on “the odds.” May we look beyond our situations to the God who knows we’re in them.

This is a season of newness not only for me but for many in our world. The autumnal equinox is approaching, and a new school year is beginning (both in the U.S. and in Eastern Europe at large). Renewals, seasonal, academic, and otherwise, call for fresh vision.

What do you see when you think of God intersecting your life in the coming days and weeks? What are you expecting? Are you expecting too…little?

Turns out that while I was busy measuring dimensions for my butterfly garden, my cave-sized expectations, God was waiting for me to accept the dimensions He had in mind for those who love Him. These dimensions are mentioned by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 3—and his prayer is mine, for you and for me: “I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.

“God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us” (Ephesians 3:19-21).

Get out of your cave and into God’s rainforest. You’re putting up walls that don’t need to be there.

Exploring the rainforest,

Renée