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And the day started so well...
While sitting in my favorite restaurant having a quiet, inexpensive lunch with my lovely wife, I watched a mini life and death drama unfold whose images will haunt me for the rest of my earthly life.
Against the back wall of this restaurant sits a 100 gallon aquarium filled with a number of hardy varieties of beautiful goldfish. The lighting was arranged by someone with an artists’ eye. It captures occasional flashes of color as the fish dart about their business oblivious to the cavalcade of amused onlookers who are busy devouring almost authentic Chinese cuisine. The fish live out their aquatic lives contentedly enough in spite of being on public display.
One particular fish caught my attention. The only difference between him and the others was that it seemed to be swimming on its side. Upon closer inspection, I noticed its’ tail wasn’t moving. In fact, this particular fish was dead.
There is great movement in the water. There were two bubblers, each stationed at opposite ends of the tank, blasting precious oxygen to the fish. As a by-product, this creates several conflicting, converging streams in the water that helps move the fish about.
The fish tank isn’t quite as placid and serene as place as I first supposed.
There was music playing in the background of the restaurant and, at times, the fish seemed to swim to the rhythm. The requiem dance of the dead fish was probably only a haunting illusion but I thought of it later while driving down a dark, out of the way road. I felt like deaf man watching a great waltz and wondering what the dancers knew that I didn’t.
Our dead fish moved up and down, back and forth, being propelled about the tank with the other fish. Except that he was on his side, you wouldn’t suspect he was dead. He moved because of the movement about him. His lifeless body responded to the swirling eddies in the water and, in spite of all his movement, he was inanimate. His watery death dance was a macabre reminder of, and a relic to, his former life.
Within a few days I imagine the stench of death will finally give away his dark little secret and he’ll be removed from the tank and given an unceremonious swirling blue water burial at sea - or be tossed to the patient cat who has been watching all along.
The ghastly images of this dead fish floating in the water looking very much alive remind me of so much of what I see in the church world. There are a lot of very dead things moving about with great aplomb. It’s not the Spirit of God moving them on, but circumstance, money, and human effort. They do seem a little sideways but they must be alive because, hey, look at all that movement!
Consider this stinging indictment in Revelation 3: 1- 2. “And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: “‘I know your works; you have the name of being alive, and you are dead. Awake, and strengthen what remains and is on the point of death.”
God’s call is to resurrection life. Even that which is dead can live again because of the victory Jesus won. I believe in the Last Days God is going to breathe on all that professes his name and we will see some very dead people in equally dead institutions come to glorious life in the Holy Spirit! We will also see some things that have had a name of being alive become painfully, obviously dead. We will be forced to admit to the Emperor’s nakedness and bury the dead thing.
Even at this late hour, there is yet grace to strengthen what remains. We can seek God and be infused with his resurrection life, or we can fake it a while longer and be as dead fish who dance madly.
Bryan Hupperts © 2009
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