Resurrection, not suicide

Death is no friend. And if you've ever contemplated suicide because you think death is your only friend, it's time to take a good solid look at life. Because life is your friend, and life is your answer in moments of despair.

''Life'' here does not mean the stream of fears, troubles, pain, unpredictability, and pressure that at times seems to flood our days and nights and would push us to try to ''end it all.'' ''Life'' means what the Psalmist described when he sang: ''The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?''n1 This entire Psalm is a source of great spiritual strength for one seeking to make life his friend, because it suggests the essential purpose of our lives and hints at the divine command to live.

n1 Psalms 27:1.

That essential purpose is to behold and to show forth in our individual lives what God is. We are, in fact, in the highest sense, the very evidence that God is, that God is Life. As we understand this purpose and embrace it, the power behind it actually takes charge of our lives, bringing to a stop the flood of troubles that would cause us to see no worth in living.

The power that gives us purpose is the very power that gave Christ Jesus such authority that he could heal the sick, reform the sinner, and raise the dead. Jesus' authority came through the Christ, the power and presence of God, expressed so completely by the Master. The Christ restores our desire to live by restoring our sense of God as our Life.

The understanding of God as Life is seen most vividly in Jesus' resurrection.The message of the resurrection is actually the very answer we are seeking. For the resurrection holds a promise of man's native wholeness, health, invulnerable identity, and indestructible purpose as the child of Life, God. And we can realize this promise here and now, for Jesus said, ''I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.''n2

n2 John 10:10.

How do we realize the promise of abundant life? Here again, our Master gives us the best example - in his own life. The message of the resurrection filled not only those hours and days after he rose from the tomb. It was illustrated in his dominion over the small deaths that would stifle the expression of Life each day. He was honest, truthful in the face of blatant lies about his character. He loved when confronted with hatred. He was faithful, healing and doing good even when no one gave gratitude and few understood.

He was true to his purpose, true to his God. And one has no feeling that he was grudging in his mission, either. There is such great love in his life that it's no surprise he was undaunted. He loved to live and lived to love. He was unselfish, unquestionably and joyously unselfish.

Just as Jesus' selfless life showed, through the climax of his resurrection, the power of God to destroy death, so our lives can illustrate that power through our own resurrection from the smaller deaths that would cause us to despair. We experience this resurrection through God's great love and through our own joy in living more and more as Jesus lived.

Rejoicing in the message of the resurrection, Mary Baker Eddy, a follower of Christ Jesus and the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes: ''Glory be to God, and peace to the struggling hearts! Christ hath rolled away the stone from the door of human hope and faith, and through the revelation and demonstration of life in God, hath elevated them to possible at-one-ment with the spiritual idea of man and his divine Principle, Love.''n3

n3 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 45.

Our Principle, the cause for which we live, is God, Spirit. This cause is unopposed. Even death, whether it threatens to destroy us completely or simply to sap our hope and joy, cannot destroy God, who is our Life. Therefore it cannot destroy us.

This is the message of the resurrection. It is the message we can bring to our family, our work, our community. The message is very much needed and, hence, we are needed. What a reason to live! DAILY BIBLE VERSE I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord. Pslams 118:17