"We are dawn people."

I've been getting up early to go out and exercise. It's cold and the pumping of my arms warms my cheeks and fingers. Our lithe little dog runs back and forth to keep pace with me as we go around the block, through the park and up past the local pool.

I can see early morning headlights rising over the train line and slowly-filling carriages thunder past sometimes. The sky is navy with a couple of tardy stars and a rumour of daylight. I try to run rather than shuffle, while dawn happens.

I am acqainting myself with the transition of night to day. Enjoying the emergence of light.

Later, I listen to Tim Keller talk about being dawn people. We are people of the light but the darkness lingers. One day we will live full in the sun, but while we wait for that fulfilment, we are walking in the pale, dark sunrise.

That's why we struggle with living the triumphant, sunshine life. That's why our thinking drifts to darkness, and we cannot find the way sometimes. That's why the light gently draws us on - nudging and caressing us into the day.

Have patience. Be ready. The sun is rising amongst us. We are the people of the dawn.

Resurrection

Resurrection is a mystery in an evidence-based, see-it-to-believe-it world. A single case report exists, from a reputable journal and it still get citations, two thousand years later. Is that enough to convince you?

There's a woman I know, whose body is wasting daily from pancreatic cancer. She wears pain like a well-loved cardigan and squeezes every last skerrick of life from the tube. Her family talk of hope that only resurrection can give.

A child fights aggressive neuroblastoma and the treatment itself is scorchingly toxic. Sometimes life has barely lost crispness when it flits away. Her parents will sit empty lapped and wonder. Perhaps a miracle, but often not.

We inhabit these bodies briefly, and they break so easily. But we are not alone.

I cling to the promise that mortality will end. Not only does God's spirit live in me now, but I will be resurrected from my death. When this body, this life fails me, I will be raised as Jesus was raised. One instance of new life will be multiplied thoughout humanity. We will finally see the reality of life without death. What a revelation it will be.

The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you. Romans 8:11.