I met a stiff today

In the morning, I was greeted by this passage from 2 Corinthians 5:1-5
1Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, 3because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

I thought it peculiar that God would choose to speak this into my heart-that I was going to see an earthly tent, yet I was to fix my eyes on the eternal house in heaven. I was going to understand what it really means when Paul says the body is an earthly tent. I don't think I ever gave serious thought to death, to what a living human being looks after the breath of life has left him. I always thought it would be rather bothersome, yet still an occasion for rejoicing, because I know I will be going to my Lord.

So I saw, I touched, and I laid bare (literally) a dead body for the first time.
Call it a cadaver, a "donor," my "greatest teacher," but that was a human body.

It was...disconcerting. Especially at first, as we raised up the electric blue body bag. It was a very clear sense of-woah, this is real. I'm really going to cut open a body. And this body does not smell very nice.

The first incision was together, with further dissection rotating through each of the members. I must admit that although this is supposed to be a defining moment for many doctors, for me it became more of an intellectual challenge-how can I fit those pretty charts, those nicely drawn muscles with this stiff laying before me, with all its imperfections, its yellow gobs of fat, its not-well-defined musculature?
And worse, how can I cut this man up without hacking the critical pieces to bits?
I looked at this as an ultimate challenge-to fit together a conceptual understanding of the human body with the reality in all its formaldehyde-laced glory.

And so I realize that this body was, indeed, a last gift by this anonymous donor. I am tremendously grateful for the incredible chance to learn from him, yet I can now also better appreciate the temporal nature of the body. So often people worry about their appearance, about their physical attractiveness-yet what does all that working out and starvation diet achieve when our bodies are merely tents? I look forward to that divine building-to be clothed with a dwelling that will never perish, one that is free of all the imperfections and vices of the human body.