Are We More Than Just A Body?

My guest blogger today is Ada Brownell. I asked her to tell the story behind her recently released non-fiction book Swallowed by LIFE: Mysteries of Death, Resurrection and the Eternal. Welcome, Ada!

I worked about fifteen years on my book, Swallowed by LIFE: Mysteries of Death, Resurrection and the Eternal. The book was released Dec. 13, 2011, about a month before the anniversary of our daughter’s death in January 1990.

We lost 31-year-old Carolyn, a talented musician with perfect pitch, to an aggressive form of lymphoma. I wanted to be sure I believed what I thought I did about living forever when you accept Jesus as Savior, but I also wanted to know whether there is evidence we are more than a body. So as a medical reporter, this was in the back of my mind when I attended conferences on the human genome, did research on cell death and regeneration, interviewed a neurosurgeon about brain death, interviewed and quoted people who had been breaths away from dying or were considered clinically dead before they revived. Just working every day with medical and mental health issues also helped. Then I studied the Bible and underlined every verse in the New Testament that had to do with eternal life. The Lord gave me the ability to discuss these heavy subjects in an upbeat manner and sometimes with a shade of humor.

Common sense and readily available evidence tell us we’re more than a body. We started as an egg the size of a mite, and arrived on this world weighing about seven pounds. Anyone who has gained or lost weight knows he is more than flesh if he thinks about it. We can have surgery and our parts removed, even portions of the brain, and have mechanical or someone else’s organs transplanted or limbs cut off and we’re still the same person. But the bottom line remains: Despite the evidence for believing that God gave His only Son that we might have eternal life, it takes faith to believe any explanation of who we are, why we are here and where we’re going. The challenge is to be sure we believe the truth–that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6).  I believe and bring in evidence for faith.

I am thrilled with the book and feel the cover that shows three little dew-drizzled seedlings popping up in a cemetery adequately signify 1 Corinthians 15:35-44, the illustration of death being likened to a planted seed that decays, but still bursts to life.

Ada Brownell is a retired newspaper reporter for The Pueblo Chieftain in Colorado and now is a free lance writer who lives in Missouri. She has had 250 articles and stories published in Christian publications. Her latest book, Swallowed by Life: Mysteries of Death, Resurrection and the Eternal is available at amazon.com and other outlets. She also has another book published by the Assemblies of God, Confessions of a Pentecostal, now out of print but will be released as an e-book soon.

Connect with her at http://www. adabrownell.com

and http://www.inkfromanearthenvessel.blogspot.com