jim henson

What place does our body have in Christianity?  Many feel that true spirituality involves a kind of denial of, or even leaving of, our bodies.  These days it is difficult for many to imagine that we will be reunited with our bodies after death.  What would be the point?  

Our bodies keep us in the present moment, the only "place" in which we can truly meet God. Our bodies were given to us by God to unite the mind and heart in a kind of "eternal now" where God exists. God told Moses, "Tell the people I AM sent me to you." God is not "I was."  God is not "I will be."  God is I AM.  God is only in the "now".

The only reality is God.  God is in this present moment because He operates outside of time. God exists in eternity.  Eternity is not some nebulous "place" in the future.  Eternity is now, because we exist now, and we will continue to exist, with God, forever.  If we do not strive for oneness with God in this life, we will not be able to be joyous with Him forever in the next.

What keeps us from this unity with our Creator? Our minds, by definition, keep us either in the past (depression) or in the future (worry).  Our mind has a difficult time even seeing that there *is* a "present moment", because it is busy doing what it does best, planning and calculating, hence, the anxiety, worry, and second guessing that plague us as we live our lives.   

When we abuse our body, it is often in an effort to run away from the "now" where it resides, in a useless effort to solve the mind's incessant cry for solutions to its endless supply of worrisome and unrealistic problems. Only God resides in the "now".  Let us ask the Holy Spirit to breathe Wisdom into our bodies as we try to stay in the moment and find God, who is the only and eternal reality. 

Hat tip to Bread & Water, Wine & Oil by Archimandrite Meletios Webber.