encourage you to pick up a copy in the lobby. It’s full of very wise counsel)
Imagine
looking into a “landfill, a junkyard---the final resting place for the things
of our lives. Sooner or later, everything we own ends up here.
Christmas and birthday presents.
Cars, boats, and hot tubs.
Clothes, stereos and barbecues.
The treasures that children quarreled about, friendships were lost over,
honesty was sacrificed for, and marriages broke up over ----all end up here”
I
find this sobering.
This
earth is not our home.
Our real home is a place we’ve never been but it is the place we are
made for.
In this life we get glimpses and foretastes.
It’s like hearing the echo of a song that hasn’t yet been sung,
smelling the scent of flower not yet grown.
Yet one day we will be at home on what the Bible calls the New Earth,
created when Heaven comes down, merges with earth and makes all things new.
This
New Earth will be a place of self giving.
It will be a place where the air is
fresh, liberating, and invigorating for those who have become givers in
the fullest sense of the word.
Givers thrive as they breathe deep this self giving breath of God.
However the opposite is also true.
For “takers” and “keepers the air” the atmosphere of the New
Earth will be stale and thick and cannot be inhaled.
This is why takers and keepers self-select against Heaven and the New
Earth. They
will not have been transformed.
They will have held onto their “selves” so tightly that the New Earth
is for them simply intolerable.
They can’t survive there.
This is of course exactly what we should expect.
Only transformed lives will want
to be with God forever in such a place.
Dallas Willard said something that I think is brilliant,
“Heaven is for anyone who can stand it”
As
Peter once said, “who then can be saved”?
Jesus’ answer was “anyone”, by which he meant anyone who allows
themselves to be transformed by the power of God.
God
turns takers and keepers into givers if they allow it.
Is there any more practical and fundamental way to describe the
outworking of a transformed life?
For more:
follow on Twitter @jefflampl
No comments:
Post a Comment