The Overcoming Blood

I find myself pondering the life that's in the blood.
The life of sin, that infects and reproduces,
that multiplies and overwhelms,
and results in a life bled out.

There was a doctor laboring in a hopeless fight
to save his patients from a death that just kept conquering.
And he got infected with it, too.
And he knew the disease, and he isolated himself.
And by the grace of God, he overcame it.
He was raised up from that death bed,
and his face glows when he speaks.
And his wife's face looks full of joy and wonder.
And he's been asked to share his story with news channels,
and to speak to Congress,
and to talk to the President about how to conquer this death.

But more than that:
he keeps opening his veins for fellow human beings,
and donating his blood -- the overcoming blood.
It was something that a recovered patient had done for him,
while he lay dying of the incurable plague.

And I think on Jesus, dying of my sin,
and raised up full of Life,
and He opens Himself up to conquer my infection.
He offers His overcoming blood,
to fight my plague from the inside out,
so I can grow clean and whole.
The Life is in the Blood.

And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, 
and because of the word of their testimony; 
and they loved not their life even unto death.  
~Revelation 12:11

Overwhelmingly, In All These Things

Every now and then, I read something in the Word
and rearrange it mentally for emphasis,
or to try to grasp better what it is saying.
This morning it was out of Romans chapter 8.
What it says is this:

Who shall separate us from the love of the Christ? 
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, 
or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 
(according as it hath been written--
`For Thy sake we are put to death all the day long, 
we were reckoned as sheep of slaughter,') 
but in all these we more than conquer, through him who loved us; 
for I am persuaded that neither death, 
nor life, nor messengers, nor principalities, 
nor powers, nor things present, 
nor things about to be, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, 
shall be able to separate us from the love of God, 
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I was reading a New American Standard this morning,
so it was a little different.
Not different in meaning, but different in words.
(As a side note: one of the remarkable things about the Living Word,
is that it lives in every language.
Translate it into the most lowborn language you can find,
and let the lowest common denominator of humanity read it and believe it,
and it will raise him up and transform him.)
Just to think a little more about what was being said to me, I rewrote it:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
In tribulation we overwhelmingly conquer.
In distress we overwhelmingly conquer.
In persecution we overwhelmingly conquer.
In famine we overwhelmingly conquer.
In nakedness we overwhelmingly conquer.
In peril we overwhelmingly conquer.
In the face of the sword we overwhelmingly conquer.
In being put to death all day long like sheep being slaughtered, 
we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
Nothing can separate us from His love.

It is a shocking, revolutionary doctrine, which I still wrestle with.
But there it is.