A Different View

 March 9, 2023

Hebrews 11 invites us to view life differently. The author offers a litany of Old Testament personages who lived not perfectly, but faithfully. If you go back and read their stories, you’ll find men and women who sinned greatly, messed up royally, and fell flat on their faces repeatedly…just like us. Yet these greatly flawed people are held up as examples of great faith, making us wonder what in the world faith really is. I think the key to this entire chapter is found in verses 13-16:

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.” —Hebrews 11:6, 13-16 

Somehow, these men and women saw life differently. They understood that what they saw all around them wasn’t all there is, and wasn’t even most important in life. They weren’t constrained by the passions and desires of this world; they were released from the ordinary competition, grasping, and backstabbing so common in life…because they had met God. Faith isn’t some pie-in-the-sky wispy dreaming; it is real life, seeing life with a new lens, actively looking for what others can’t see and can’t imagine.

If all I live for is what I can see, faith isn’t required. Faith doesn’t necessarily win. The chapter ends by telling of people who looked for a better world, people who saw themselves as only travelers in this world, and who were beaten, starved, hunted, killed, but who kept looking beyond all that.

Humanly speaking, I don’t see peace in the Ukraine, prosperity in Cuba, hope here in the USA. People I’ve prayed for still sicken and die, but I will continue to swim against the current and look for what I don’t see in this world. This morning while ruminating on these matters, I got a bit sidetracked listening to some Gaither Homecoming videos. One of them featured a man with pretty significant cerebral palsy. Stammering his way through his story, he said, “Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m still in the oven and God’s still in the kitchen. One day, God is going to pull me out of the oven and say, “Well Done!”” He then led the choir in a song I remembered and sang along: “What a day, glorious day that will be!” 

What a day that will be

When my Jesus I shall see

And I look upon his face

The one who saved me by his grace

When he takes me by the hand

And leads me through the Promised Land

What a day, glorious day that will be

There'll be no sorrows there

No more burdens to bear

No more sickness and no more pain

No more parting over there

But forever I will be

With the one who died for me

What a day, glorious day that will be

My Baptist roots go deep into the soil of heaven. In my fifty years of Methodism, I haven’t noticed much talk of heaven from the establishment, but those roots are deep; I am only a pilgrim here. My hope is in Jesus and the home he is preparing for me and for all who dare to see life differently and who keep looking for a “home in the heavens, not made with hands” (2 Corinthians 5:1).