Your brain has 86 billion neurons. Each neuron is linked to 10,000 others and they signal each other once every second.

Now memorize those facts, you may need them some day in a game of Trivial Pursuit. Apart from that, I can’t think what useful purpose there may be in knowing about all the scintillating activity going on in your personal upstairs.

The numbers are amazing, but the physical facts bring us no closer to answers for the metaphysical questions. What is life? What is consciousness? What are thoughts? Who am I? What happens to my thoughts when I die?

The Bible teaches that each of us is something else, something more, than a physical body. The apostle Paul speaks of being absent from the body and present with the Lord. Peter speaks of his body as a tabernacle, or tent, which he expected shortly to put off.

I am content to take those statements as trustworthy grounds for believing that the essence of a person lives on after he dies. I dare not go beyond that into metaphysical speculations. The Bible also tells us that some day, after our body has decayed into its primary elements, we will be reunited with our body. And it will be the same body – yet not the same. These mysteries are beyond the capacity of our physical minds, they can only be grasped by faith. And what is faith? Another mystery, yet something that is real and life-changing.