What if between Life and Death lay a bridge?
A causeway of consciousness…
I imagine it to be short –
slightly less than a body length,
so that your head may be on one side but your feet on the other.
Such a bridge would be the result of the kindness of life’s Engineer.
It would allow the one dying to consciously linger in the liminality between the spaces of life and… eternal life.
Like diving into a freshwater river, there is a point when my diving arms and head are submerged, and my feet are still dry. I can be in two places at once.
As one’s feet remain on earth, one’s nose might smell glory,
One’s head might feel the warmth of a different sun,
One’s cheeks might feel the caress of a familiar hand.
The bridge draws the heart first, then the mind, then the body last of all.
Likewise the senses, fleeing the grip of earthly sensation to chase the dominion of the divine!
Perhaps first the smell. A long lost casserole from many meals ago will once again makes it way into my nostrils, sending my long-term memory grasping and flailing.
And maybe after smell, hearing follows.
“Whose voice is that I hear?
Is it that of my infant sister whom I never met? It sounds familiar, but not.
Is it my Dad, with all of his wit and intellect returned to him?
Or is it my Saviour? The voice I have searched endlessly for? It sounds like rushing waters – Oh, let it be him! Let it be the voice of my King! Let it be the voice of him who has received endless correspondence by prayer mail.”
And while our being traverses the bridge with exuberant anticipation, our outer shell may look to others like a computer struggling to process everything that’s going on… like the embodiment of a spinning rainbow wheel.
The lights aren’t on, but we’ve never been more at home!
Unbeknownst, behind the vacant stare is an adventurous child eagerly rowing their boat across the lake to the Celestial City.
If the bridge is spoken of, it is as if it is a declining slide into a pit.
“We’re losing her”…
I suspect this might be true for some.
But for sinners turned saints,
through the death of Christ,
the bridge is not a loss, but a gain.
It is the walk from the car into the party.
It’s the laying in bed after a great sleep, eager to get up, but content to pause in the morning sun and contemplate the day ahead.
It is the pitstop 2 hours into a holiday journey. Far enough away to begin relaxing, but not yet at the destination. Far enough away to not return for the thing you forgot, and too swept up in anticipation to care for it anyway.
Maybe we all are met by a different bridge, when the time comes.
For some it may be the rising realisation that
we did not do, think, say, worship what we ought.
Cue regret.
For others it is celebrating what we know for certain lay ahead.
We don’t drift away, we drift toward.
The difference is Jesus.
He is the divine Parks Ranger checking dashboards for an up to date parks pass, stamp in hand, ready to grant an eternal detour to all who repent.
Every sleepy movement toward Jesus is met with reassuring beauty and goodness.
Remember, O my soul, to die is gain.
And remember it now, here, before the bridge.