A Handful of Acorns

This week I have to both Whatsapp, and host a Zoom meeting, which is an anxious business for me.  Will I ever feel confident or competent with these things?   The Sunday meeting yesterday was such a comfort - the teaching just gets better and better.  It seemed as if it was a busy weekend, yet I spent a fair amount of it lying on the sofa watching the telly.  The pain eases when I lie down, thank God.   During the arthritis flare-ups there is no escape from it, no position that helps.  

I spoke to Bea of the North and to Jean - by phone obviously, we are all in Lockdown, and Jean and I are back in extra severe lockdown.   

Anyway, I think I need to look ahead to the wonderful Day of Judgement - the thousand years during which the whole earth will become the peaceful paradise it was always meant to be, and obedient mankind will be restored to the life and perfection our first parents so tragically threw away.

The dead will not be forgotten at that time. Jehovah will not wake them from the dreamless sleep of death into a chaotic and violent earth, but into a peaceful and loving one, which will be under the heavenly rule of the Kingdom of God.  And they will be woken up to a completely fresh start.  Famously, the Bible tells us that "the wages sin pays is death".   The dead have paid that wage and are acquitted of their sin, their imperfection.  

As Romans 6:7 clearly and simply says:  "For the one who has died has been acquitted from his sin."

How I wish I had known that in my Catholic Convent schooldays, as at that time the Church taught us children that all sorts of horrors and punishments were in store for us after death.   It is a teaching that put me off the whole idea of God and the Bible for many years.

So "many of those asleep in the ground of dust" will wake up in the restored earthly paradise and there they will learn about the Creator, Jehovah. And that brings me to the handful of acorns, because Revelation tells us that Scrolls will be opened at that time.

Revelation 20:12 says: "And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and scrolls were opened. But another scroll was opened; it is the scroll of life. The dead were judged out of those things written in the scrolls according to their deeds."

Clearly they will not be judged on what they did before, but on how they respond to the Inspired teaching they receive during the Thousand Years. 

And during that time you could go out with a handful of acorns and watch them grow into a forest of mighty oaks, hundred of years old - and you could coppice it so that there would be many beautiful walks and clearings - many lovely places in which to wake up from the dreamless sleep of death. And maybe among those Scrolls will be information about when my parents are to be woken from the sleep of death - which I so much hope they will be!

I think both of them - IF they are to be resurrected - would love to wake up in a forest clearing.  Or maybe my father woud like to wake up in the beautiful lupin fields he remembered from his Polish childhood.  Maybe I will be able to go out to a lovely meadow with a handful of lupin seeds... IF I am there that is.   Anyway, Jehovah knows what the exact right spot would be for everyone, as he reads every heart. and I can safely leave it to Him.

Which does bring me to the next bit of the Resurrection Watchtower article:

9. Why will resurrected ones not come back with a perfect mind and body?

9 Jehovah promises that no one living under Christ’s rule will say: “I am sick.” (Isa. 33:24; Rom. 6:7) Thus, those who are raised from the dead will be re-created with healthy bodies. However, they will not immediately be perfect. If they were, they might seem unfamiliar to their loved ones. It seems that all mankind will gradually grow to perfection during the Thousand Year Reign of Christ. It is only at the end of the thousand years that Jesus will hand the Kingdom back to his Father. Then the Kingdom will have accomplished its work completely, including the raising of mankind to a perfect state.​—1 Cor. 15:24-28; Rev. 20:1-3.