For the summer, my church, Phinney Ridge, has been doing Wednesday night bible studies called Bible Basics. I've attended five or so and they have all been good but tonight hit home.

The topic was Death and Life. Pastor Hoffman, who was teaching the class, posited that the Bible is a book not about Life and Death, but about Death and Life. We started with the resurrection story from Mark and wound our way through the "greatest hits" of New and Old Testament death/life paradoxes.

We Lutheran's love our paradoxes. It's not Death then Life or Life through Death it's Death and Life at once. Each week we say these words: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. How can all three tenses of "to be" be possible at once? That's why it's a mystery.

We finished with a passage from Diana Butler Bass' new book Christianity After Religion. She relates a friend asking a liberal Episcopal Bishop if he believed in the resurrection. He went on to say of course, because he sees it every day. Bass uses this to make the point that trusting the resurrection is far more important than believing it.

Trusting the resurrection is a phrase that a year ago would have ment little to nothing to me. Today it means everything. If God condescended to go from death to life, then surely I can be united with God to go from New Castle to Seattle.

Ahh but the paradox. I have to die daily in order to live. Some days there is more dying than living, most days are the other way round. But every day I know that each and every emotion and thought is one that is intimately understood. My hope is built on nothing less.