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Heaven on our
minds
December 9, 2007
I have been thinking a lot about heaven lately. Not that I am about to die or
anything like that but rather during this season of advent when as Christians we
think about the first coming of Jesus, his leaving heaven and coming to earth,
we also remind ourselves that he is ‘adventing’ again soon – coming again soon.
This time as the one who will bring us who trust in him to heaven. It makes me
wonder what life will look like then, what will life consist of, who will be
there, what will be there.
The Bible struggles to describe heaven. One attempt for example is Revelation 21
and 22. But here language struggles to describe things that John sees – things
that he has never seen before, and so he uses descriptions of things that he
knows, and knows from the Old Testament like rivers (Ezekiel), and the tree of
life (Genesis) and a large temple (Ezekiel). Heaven is clearly so different to
what we know of life now.
The thing that is clear from the bible is that God; Father, Son and Spirit will
be there as will all of God’s people, people from then, people from now and
people from a time in our future; people from every nation and tribe and
language. It is the place where you will want to be. We should do everything we
can to make sure that we are there.
But we are not yet in heaven. God still has tasks that we need to do. Christians
are sometimes accused of being too heavenly minded to be any earthly good. As
‘our world’ (represented by the United Nations) sits in Bali and talks about
climate change and other things on our world’s agenda, I wonder how often they
think about heaven. We clearly have lots of things that we can do and should do
as God’s stewards of this world until this world comes to an end. So is the work
you do, both paid and unpaid, it is effort for the good of our world.
Make sure that you do your work for Jesus. This means being
Jesus’ representative wherever you are. Do that well and live as Christians who
are both heavenly minded and of earthly good. That way heaven will be on our
minds and in our earthly actions and we will challenge and encourage others to
make sure they think of heaven and participate in that joy with us when Jesus
returns.
Ian
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