Heaven

 January 31, 2021

Park church’s most recent sermon series is billed as “Endless,” with sermons on the reality of eternity, of heaven, and of hell. Pastor Joe this morning spoke about what he considers the error of thinking believers will spend eternity in heaven, instead presenting the case for us living on a new earth. 

I’m not particularly adept at advanced theology; frankly, most of it bores me. I’ve read some pretty heady stuff, both theologically and philosophically, but most of it seems to me designed to impress the less educated with big foreign words. It’s not that I don’t have opinions about all of it, but most of the time, I think pretty simply. My mantra for such things is, “Well...it’s a pretty deep subject for such a shallow mind.” So here’s what I think about heaven. Get ready to be impressed. Or not.

Heaven is wherever Jesus is. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s here on earth, or somewhere beyond the galaxies. Heaven is not as much a place as it is a Person. That’s why it’s so important to get to know him here and now. If I am not particularly interested in knowing Christ better here, what makes me think I’m going to want to spend eternity with him? Here, as St. Paul says, “we see in a glass dimly.” Mirrors back then were made of polished brass. You might see your reflection, but not in the vibrant colors and clear lines we know today. Our knowledge of Christ is like that—a dim reflection of the reality that awaits. Here, there is much to distract; competition for our attention and affection. The day is coming when all that diminishes and detracts will be removed, and we will experience the full glory of his presence. THAT is what heaven is all about. Debate all the other stuff, if you will, but I’m not interested. Knowing Jesus fully is my goal. Someday, I’ll get there. Where it is doesn’t matter. Who it is is all that matters.

Character

 January 30, 2021

Nehemiah was a man of bold faith and character. He took his life in his hands asking the king to send him to Jerusalem, prayed and formulated a plan to rebuild the city walls, withstood opposition from enemies within and without, accomplished his goal, and then tackled the lax religious observance of the people. Everything he did, he did with energy and power. A man of prayer, he was also a man of action, combining religious observance with armed resistance. He refused to lay burdens upon his people for his work, like former president Trump refused to take a salary from the people. At the end of it all, the only thing he asked was for God to remember him. He didn’t need accolades, didn’t want riches, actually took a secondary place to others in the dedication of the city walls he had built (Neh. 12:38). 

It’s not an easy matter to work so hard and then slip into the background. Most men would welcome the honor. Not Nehemiah. I think it was Lincoln who said that the measure of a man’s character is not how he handles failure, but how he handles success. Too often, success is more of a downfall than failure. Failure builds us; success tests us. I’ve known both, and am thankful tonight for this reminder to not let success go to my head. May it be enough that my reward is that of Nehemiah: “Remember me, O God!”

Hope

 January 29, 2021

I’ve been thinking recently about hope. Not hope as in “I hope the Bills win the playoffs.” That hope is a bit late, and dependent on factors no one, not even the Bills could control. I’m thinking of hope as the Bible describes it in Hebrews 6:19—“an anchor for the soul.” Our hope is independent of circumstances, wholly dependent on the faithfulness of God. 

People often criticize Christians for their hope. They say it’s a “pie in the sky bye and bye” faith that doesn’t touch down here and now. I disagree. It very much lives in this world. John Piper put it this way: “It’s Object is in the future; It’s experience is in the present.” Let me illustrate, but with something quite dependent upon matters outside of my control.

I keep bees. Years ago, a gentleman in my church introduced me to this fascinating hobby, Sadly, my colonies died one spring some twenty years ago, and I gave it up; but last summer, I decided it was time to get back into it. Right now I have three colonies in the side yard. In the winter, honeybees cluster around the queen, keeping her warm and ready to resume egg laying, usually sometime in February. If all goes well, by April, the colony is exploding in numbers, but it’s a critical time for them. If they run out of honey stores or can’t get to what’s in the hive, they will starve, often only inches from the life-giving food they need. 

In the fall, I inspected the colonies, made sure they had enough stores for the winter, closed them up, and waited. In hope. I made preparations in October with April in mind. Now that I’ve finished our laundry room, I’ll be assembling frames for them to build comb on in the spring. Everything I did in the fall, and everything I do from now until April, is done in hope that they will be alive and ready to start bringing in nectar in the spring. Hope prompted me to do things beforehand; my eye on the future guided my hands in the present.

In an even greater sense, the Christian’s hope of eternal life is what motivates our actions today. If there is no future, no heaven (and hell), why bother with the hard work of loving others, feeding the poor, clothing the naked, caring for the sick? Of course, doing so is admirable, but human nature what it is, we soon let up our pace, flag in our zeal, and start looking out for Number One. Hope keeps my eyes off myself and on Jesus Christ, the Object of my hope that motivates me here and now. Hopefully, in the spring, my hives will be bursting with buzzing—a hope conditioned upon factors I cannot control. My hope in Jesus is secure, because nothing is outside his control, for which I am thankful tonight.

Glory for Me

January 28, 2021

Psalm 17:15 reads,”I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.” As if it weren’t enough to someday wake in God’s presence, the promise here is that we shall awake in his likeness. I imagine Paul had this in mind when he penned 2 Corinthians 3:18–“We all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” Or 1 Corinthians 13:12–“Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then, face to face.” 

As a teenage new Christian, we sang Charles Gabriel’s hymn, “O That Will Be Glory for Me.” The first two refrains are as follows:

“When all my labors and trials are o’er

And I am safe on that beautiful shore,

Just to be near the dear Lord I adore

Will through the ages be glory for me.

“When by the gift of his infinite grace

I am accorded in heaven a place,

Just to be there and to look on his face

Will through the ages be glory for me.”

I remember singing these words joyfully, but it’s only with more than a half century under my belt that I am beginning to appreciate them. It’s a song of anticipation that the young only appreciate when faced with abject failure or defeat. Anticipation produces either escapism or engagement. People often think of heaven as a way out of life’s problems instead of the natural result of life lived as God planned. Without the anticipation of eternal life, escapism is a logical choice—why engage in a difficult endeavor that has no ultimate goal or meaning?

Contemplation of heaven is merely the fulfillment of what we aspire to be here on earth. At my worst, I reflect only my own fallen likeness. At my best, I hope to exhibit the likeness, a reflection of Jesus Christ, but I usually fall somewhere in between; a faulty and flawed likeness at best. the thought that someday I’ll not only be WITH Christ fully, but LIKE him also, is my hope. As Gabriel said, it’s only by his grace, now and forever. May this hope mold and shape my words and deeds now, in this life, as they will in the life to come!

 

(Un)Answered Prayers

 January 27, 2021

Intercessory prayer is hard work! Just briefly mentioning the names on my prayer list can take me a half hour or more. Prayers with any measure of detail can consume an entire morning, and if I don’t have my list in front of me, I forget a lot of the people and situations I promised myself I would remember. But it’s not the sheer volume of prayers that makes it so much work; it’s also the frequent absence of seeing concrete and significant answers. I can’t even begin to number the prayers that seemingly have gone unanswered. 

But what if instead of being proactive, many of my prayers are simply protective or helping maintain a status quo? More than once I’ve been involved in situations that were troubled for some time before exploding in very messy ways. In reflecting upon these, one of the common denominators is my failure to persevere in prayer. A marriage was troubled. The couple came in for counseling. We prayed. I prayed...for a time. Things seemed to be going well enough, until one filed for divorce, and I was convicted yesterday the Lord of slacking off in my prayers. It seemed that the couple had reconciled, so I stopped praying. In reality, they were still struggling behind the scenes, and needed those prayers to maintain equilibrium. 

Sometimes answered prayer doesn’t come in the form of dramatic divine intervention; it may be in the quiet and desperate struggle that no one sees, but which needs the strength those seemingly unanswered prayers have been providing. We who pray must decide whether prayer actually does any good, or not; whether there is a spiritual dimension to life that is impacted by our prayers, or not. If not, then we might as well quit praying altogether, but if God really exists, and if he listens to our prayers, then my prayers can, and do, make a difference. Quitting early is an admission that we don’t really believe there is a loving Heavenly Father who hears and answers. Sometimes the mere maintenance of the status quo is more of an answer than we can imagine.

What We See

Exclusion

 January 25, 2021

It’s OK to not have all the answers. It’s OK to not even know all the questions. Some people seem to have a gift for ferreting out pearls of wisdom from even the most obscure Scriptures. Daily they offer gems that gleam with a kaleidoscope of beauty that the rest of us wish we could see, but don’t. We muddle through, hoping that occasionally even a flawed diamond will fall into our hands. 

I’ve been reading through the Old Testament. 1 and 2 Chronicles had some good stories with plenty of examples of human failure and divine grace, but of course, they were mingled with endless lists of names that have the capacity to put even the most dedicated scholar to sleep. Today, having left Chronicles behind, I read through Ezra, the scribe who probably wrote both the Chronicles, and perhaps the two Samuels and Kings as well. His biography (or perhaps autobiography) is somewhat less dramatic than those of whom he wrote in his other works. He oversaw the rebuilding of the temple after the Babylonian Captivity, and tidied up some of the errant practices of the religious leaders of his day. It is this latter that has my attention, if not my understanding.

Ezra was charged with ensuring the orthodoxy of the Remnant who returned to Jerusalem under the protection of Cyrus. Israel’s history had been one of struggle between the monotheism of Yahweh and the polytheism of the rest of the world which continually threatened and often succeeded in infiltrating pure Hebraic religion. Their being carried into captivity by Babylon’s Nebuchadnezzer in 586 BC was what finally cured them of their polytheistic impulses. Seventy years exile in a pagan foreign land taught them their lesson. Polytheism was never a serious threat to Judaism from then on.

But when the Jews returned to their homeland, they found living there the descendants of the poorest of their countrymen who had been left behind; people who had mingled and intermarried with the peoples the Babylonians had imported as part of their policy of breaking up opposition by scattering and settling them in the far-flung reaches of the empire. In Judea, these people were not only “mixed breed,” their religion was a synchretic hodge-podge of Judaism and whatever religions the imported peoples happened to bring with them.

So when Ezra set about rebuilding the temple and restoring worship, these settlers who had been in Judea for the past seventy years naturally saw themselves as having priority in the process. They were, after all, the “old guard.” But Ezra would have none of it. He refused their offer, which caused no small stir. There was a further problem. Many of those who had returned with him had settled down and were intermarrying with the native population. This might be permissible for the ordinary settler, but the religious leaders were absolutely forbidden to do this, even to the point of insisting that those who had thus married renounce their wives and children. The purity, and therefore survival, of the nation was at stake.

So here’s the problem: What do we do with this today? We live in a country enamored with multi-culturalism, with ethnicity, and inclusiveness. In past generations, when people came to these shores, they pretty much left behind their old alliances and even nationalities. Though they retained their languages and cultures, their primary identity was that they were now Americans. There was a unity of values and ideals that no longer exists. Ezra insisted that anyone not willing to be 100% Jewish be completely cut off from the worshipping life of the synagogue. Exclusion was necessary for the survival of the nation. 

Jesus taught differently. He held up the half-breed Samaritan as an example of God’s love, and included the leper, prostitute, and traitorous tax collector among his followers. We live suspended between these two. Without a clear demarcation of “in” and “out,” we soon lose our identity, but holding strictly to such a standard flies in the face of the Gospel. So tonight, I ponder these Scriptures, not yet finding the answers to my questions, but grateful to have the Scriptures to guide and correct my often errant thinking. I am a legalistic at heart, but I also lean hard into the grace without which I would certainly be left on the outside, looking in.