We Are Alive

From the bool "The Road Trip that changed the World"

by Mark Sayers

Takashi Nagai was a physician and a Christian that survived the Atomic bombing of Nagasaki. His wife and much of the city was turned to ash. He stayed and ministered to people - even as his life wasted away (between radiation poisoning and cancer).

WE ARE ALIVE! 

It takes a servant heart to see the world through God's eyes. 

Takashi Nagai, wracked with a terminal illness, living in a city of death, was able to see the world for what it is. His ability to view life through the prism of the Cross lives on as a testimony to us. One night, as families huddled together warming themselves around fires, in the ruins of what used to be their homes, Nagai awoke, and in the stillness listened to the sound of his small children breathing.

Having walked the tight rope between death and life, the passing of his world and the kingdom to come, knowing that his time would soon be up, Nagai would write in his journal with barely contained happiness, "We're alive, we're alive! And a whole new day is waiting for us!"

The joy that defies human understanding, the sense of transcendence, meaning, and purpose, is found by a man who when measured by the standards of our world has nothing.

He lives in a shanty, his wife and friends are dead, he has few or no possessions, he will soon die, and he is immobile n a city blown apart by an atomic weapon.

Yet the great paradox which infuses life and the cosmos is that

....he who gives his life for Christ gains the world,

....he who is a prisoner of God finds freedom.

He who cries shall find joy.