From Before Birth we Live in Full Resurrection of Life in Divinity by Olga Lucia Álvarez Benjumea ARCWP

Olga Lucia Alvarez Benjumea ARCWP

Olga Lucia with her father

Celebration of Life/Funeral

We read in the text of John 8:57, that they said to Jesus, "You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham. Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I was".

There is a tremendous message in this passage.

Dad, recently he left us to continue living life in fullness in the Divinity, to continue living life.

It is not easy for us to break schemes and paradigms to accept, assume and understand the process of birth and death, when religions have put in our heads the longing for a better life. We are told that "this life is not the life", that "there is a better one to come". "Someday everything will be better". "if you behave well, you will receive the reward, or else the punishment" (II Corinthians 5:10). We have been browbeaten with a punishing and righteous god. We have been made not to take life seriously. We are stubborn that we must be in defense of affliction and suffering, misery and death. Religion has reinforced all the above ideas.

In one way or another we all long for a life, a heaven, where there are no climatic disasters, where there is no disease, pain, violence, murder, discrimination, discord, resentment, revenge, corruption, injustice, abuse of power. We think and wish it from our "I". An "I" that hopes and believes in immortality. In this reality of the life we live there is also the Divinity. We are the "I" and the Divine in unity. The "I" alone does not work alone, in the "I" is the Divinity, made a "we" in plural, which is the ONE.
If we have been from before our birth in God, and God in us, we are born and we die, and the Divine presence continues in us, we are immortal, we are resurrected, we have never stopped living life. We have not been outside of God. God has not been outside of us. The Divinity has not been above and we have not been below. We are not "gods" but we are children of God living Life, without interruption, always in the present.

Let us not allow ourselves to be denied or distorted that we have been created in the image and likeness of the Divinity (Genesis 1:26-27), being all of us, although not perfect, representatives of the Divinity on earth.

Let us ask ourselves, if we have been baptized, why is the dignity of women and men, which has been outlined and confirmed in Baptism, ignored in society, culture and religion?

If we are in God and God is in us, in our Baptism Heaven was also opened and the voice of the Divinity was heard saying: "This is my beloved son, this is my beloved daughter".

If we continue reading the text of John 8:59 we can well realize that whoever thinks differently, accepts and assimilates such a beautiful truth that Jesus teaches us, will be "stoned", annihilated, marginalized and thrown out of the temple or religion.

Thank you, Dad, because through your life experience, your testimony, you have made me discover the permanent presence of God in my life and in everything that surrounds us.
On behalf of my family and myself, our thanks for the expressions of support and solidarity in these moments to continue living life in God and God in us.

Olga Lucia Alvarez Benjumea
*ARCWP-South America Presbyterian
Envigado, October 22/2021