A Beautiful Day

April 22, 2020

This morning’s psalm included these words: 

“Now I know that the LORD saves his anointed; 

He will answer him from his holy heaven 

with the saving strength of his right hand.” 

—Psalm 20:6

This is a messianic psalm that speaks to the coming of the Christ, but it also applies to all who are in him—we are the anointed, the chosen ones of God. We are saved not because we made such wise and wonderful decisions, but because in his mercy, God chose us. 

This evening, I was reading from 1 Corinthians. The church at Corinth was a mess. They had trusted Christ and were baptized into him; they had all the gifts of the Holy Spirit operating in full power, but they were at each other’s throats, fighting with one another, sinking in a cesspool of immorality to the extent that anyone looking at them wouldn’t see much that resembled Jesus Christ. As their pastor, Paul carefully and compassionately threads his way through their problems, culminating in that wonderful hymn of love found in chapter thirteen:

“Love suffers long and is kind; 

love does not envy; 

love does not parade itself, 

is not puffed up; 

does not behave rudely, 

does not seek its own, 

is not provoked, 

thinks no evil; 

does not rejoice in iniquity, 

but rejoices in the truth; 

Love bears all things, 

believes all things, 

hopes all things, 

endures all things. 

Love never fails.”

—I Corinthians 13:4-8 NKJV

He isn’t finished. From this high vantage point, he goes on to deal with one last problem before launching into the fifteenth chapter about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For a church hopelessly divided, wracked with scandal, needing to learn what love really is, they needed one thing more—a vision of the victory and glory of the resurrection. Paul paints a picture we often fail to see. In our best flights of imagination, we try to picture eternal life in heaven. We (especially those of us who have more than a few years under our belts) imagine new bodies full of life and vigor—sort of turning back the clock. Paul tells us things will be as different as the plant from the seed. They don’t look anything alike, but we know the apple seed will bring forth an apple tree. 

If you’ve been feeling confined, perhaps a bit down due to social distancing, it might do some good to review Paul’s hymn on love, asking how you might express that kind of love to someone today. Even more, spend some time reading that resurrection chapter and remember that what lies in store is so much more than even the best we have here. This COVID has helped tear us from the lesser loyalties and habits that we didn’t even know were supplanting the more important aspects of our lives—time spent together, time with God, attention to the beauty all around us. 

Today, Linda and I were able to visit my 97-year-old mother for the first time in almost two months. When we got home, granddaughter Izzi and her best friend were waiting in the driveway to talk with us. Later, Matt, Jeanine, Mattie, and Nathan stopped by to give us some of Nathan’s mac and cheese he made from Linda’s recipe. We had a wonderful conversation (social distancing, of course). If seeing each other face to face was so good today, I can only imagine what God’s ultimate family reunion will be like when there is no social distancing, no limitations of this world, but only the glories of the resurrection and the unending song of the victory of Christ, the Lamb of God. The giving of thanks doesn’t even begin to grasp what that day will be like. The promise of that psalm will be our reality: 

“Now I know that the LORD saves his anointed; 

He will answer him from his holy heaven 

with the saving strength of his right hand.”