A Ghost, but Not as We Know Him
I’m walking up Buchanan Street in Glasgow this week. Alone, and yet not. There’s a boy beside me. He is fifteen, wearing the clothing of a 70s teen. He is awkward, shy, dreaming, full of questions and fears with no father or mother to turn to. He is me. Or rather, he was me. And as we walk together through the noise of the present, I’m struck by a quiet, unsettling wonder: why is he still here? Why does he walk beside me after all these years?
Is this just the mind’s trickery; our memory looping back on itself like an old song? Or is it something far deeper, something we’ve never stopped to explore because it frightens us too much?
The ancient Hebrews, like the Greeks, knew we were not just flesh and blood. They spoke of two realities within us — body and soul, basar and nephesh. And then they spoke of something deeper still: the spirit, the breath of God. The writer of Hebrews puts it with startling clarity:
“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” — Hebrews 4:12
There is something here that science cannot dissect. A mystery that resists reduction. The boy beside me is not just a bundle of neurons firing in nostalgia; he is part of the “recording” that lives on, the essence of who I am and who I have been.
Think of it: millions of bodies buried, burned, or swallowed by the sea — their flesh long gone the way of all mankind. And yet, like the indestructible black box of an aircraft, something locked in time , Not just the data, but the being, the loves, the sorrows, the laughter, the prayers whispered in the dark. All waiting, perhaps, to be retrieved at the command of Jesus.
It’s why Stephen, as stones rained down upon him, could cry out with unwavering confidence:
“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” — Acts 7:59
He wasn’t speaking metaphorically. He knew there was something more — something beyond the ruin of the body, something that even death cannot touch.
And so I keep walking. Older now, but not alone. The boy is still beside me because he was never meant to disappear. He is part of the unbroken thread that ties who I was to who I am, and perhaps, who I will yet become.
Maybe that is the great, luminous secret at the heart of all this: we are not just fleeting shadows passing through time. We are known, remembered, and held, every version of us in the eternal memory of God. And one day, like a voice drawn from the wreckage, the boy and the man will stand together, whole.
Wow. What if the self you once were is not lost at all, only waiting to be called by name?
P.S. Ghost: It can mean spirit, soul, breath, the very life force itself.
Verses from The Berean Literal Bible
Image by Copilot
