Life.

What can be closer to our eyes, ears, mind — to our whole being, than life? Everything lives, there is life everywhere. At the same time, what can be more puzzling to us than life? Even to this day, people have not come to an agreement on the question: is life an initial beginning or a secondary appearance? Is it an origin or an aftermath? The root of existence or its flower? To those that believe in God, there is no question. The vital beginning lies in the basis of all beings, and it is implanted by the Creator.

As soon as life leaves matter, it becomes dead. How it departs is inexplicable. Much as one would wish to catch her at this moment, it flees like quicksilver through fingers. Outlived, torn out, mowed grass — and the form of life given to it by God, has left it. A person dies and his life leaves the body. However, it hasn’t perished. In the destroyed body that has been surrendered to the soil, her place will be slowly occupied by much lower life forms. Yet its life bearing beginning, intellectual, conscious, which we assume consciously, its soul doesn’t die. Before anything, it departs taking with it that which it brought to the body. It brought the person a consciousness in an individual, personal form — and it carries it away, having filled it with substances worthy of eternity (and maybe not so worthy).

Thus surmises reason. However, the Christian faith gives firm and clear witness to the immortality of the soul. "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7). God’s breath can never perish! The body perished, and the "spirit shall return unto God, Who gave it" (Ecclesiasts 12:7). This is our God-revealed truth, this is our faith.