Curly no more

My daughter’s fish died about a month ago (thus prompting eventually the need for another pet, about which you can read in “Bad Rat or Bad Rap”). It jumped out of the fish bowl. My wife found it still alive and placed it back in the water, but it was too late. Hours later it hovered motionless at the bottom of the aquarium, and then eventually became a belly up beta. We did a brief service by the toilet side at which my 4 year old daughter sang then cried. It was a solemn yet beautiful ceremony. Poor Curly (my daughter named it) decided she would push the envelope of her existence. Apparently the proverbial grass looked greener on the other side of her fish bowl. Obviously it was not – it was the wrong environment for a fish. But our funeral rectified that as we placed Curly’s corpse back in the place of its origin –water. And so, I’ve come to the conclusion that toilet bowl funerals are quite suitable for fish, in the same way that dirt funerals are appropriate for humans and other ground dwelling beasts. It makes sense in the circle of life as we know it, I guess. And while death may mark the doorway to dirt for human bodies and a segue to the sewer for pet fishes named Curly, I’m convinced that restoration and resurrection have entered the world. Their presence incrementally and mysteriously rewinds and reverses the known order of nature. Now, in large part hidden, a quantum explosion of revelation will one day disclose the ways in which these forces have been at work in and through God and his people. Don’t worry, fish will still be in the sea (or fish bowls) and man will still walk the earth, but the circle of life will no longer entail death. We'll finally be in the right environment to sustain life.