What Do You Think About Heaven?

 

Most of our images of heaven, like most of our songs about heaven, are influenced by popular Victorian and Platonic descriptions, rather than by thoughtful, scriptural, consideration of what God is planning to do.

  Romans 8 tell us, "For the whole creation groans in travail, waiting for the redemption of the sons of God."

   Why? Because He is going to make a new creation! The ultimate purpose of God was not Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; it was Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and all His people in a new heaven and a new earth.

   For the cross of Christ was not something that was bought into the picture to fix a problem with God's original plan. The cross was not Plan B - far from it! It was part of the original eternal plan -- that in view of man's inevitable rebellion, God prepared the solution in advance. The crucifixion of Christ and our salvation because of it, was foreordained by God from the very beginning!

Revelation 21 tells us about the coming of the new heaven and new earth. "I am making everything new...God's dwelling place is now among the people, and He will dwell with them...He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain...I will be their God and they will be my children..."

   And we say, "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!"

Quoteworthy - Miracles - Albert Einstein

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." - Albert Einstein


I was weeding. One sturdy little seedling, perhaps 6 inches tall, stood erect as a telephone pole, daring me to pull it up. I tugged and yanked. Out it came - with a pecan at its root! Left alone, that little soldier, in a few years, would have become a great pecan tree, sheltering birds and insects and providing food for squirrels.  A miracle in the making - just needing a few years to present itself as a for-real, authentic, bona-fide miracle!


Does a "miracle in the making"  still qualify as a miracle?  If a giant tree had grown up overnight, we would have taken pictures, called journalists - announcing the amazing news that a great pecan tree had sprouted and reached mature growth  in just a few hours! It would be like seeing a time-released photo show on the Nature channel. Growing and leafing out and producing pecans before our very eyes.


It would be a miracle!


Does that mean the only difference between miracles and just "normal" nature is time? Is that the only way to distinguish? Just time elapsing?


I don't know about you, but I think it is all a miracle! Everything around us,
every moment of our day......just one miracle after another.....

Here dies another day

During which I have had eyes, ears, hands,

And the great world around me;

And with tomorrow begins another,

Why am I allowed two?

   - G. K. Chesterton

Discarding the Valuable, Keeping the Worthless

                                                          Holding on to the Worthless

The weight of gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents [about 25 tons], not including the revenues from merchants and traders from all the Arabian kings and governors of the land.

King Solomon made two hundred large shields of hammered gold; six hundred bekas [7 1/2 pounds] went into each shield. He also made three hundred small shields of hammered gold with three minas [3 3/4 pounds] of gold in each shield.

Then the king made a great throne inlaid with ivory and overlaid with gold...all King Solomon's goblets were gold, and all the household articles in the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon were pure gold.

The king had a fleet of trading ships at sea along the coasts of Hiram. Once every three years it returned, carrying gold, silver and ivory, and apes and baboons....

Year after year, everyone who came brought a gift -- articles of silver and gold, robes, weapons, and spices and horses and mules....

King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings.... 
                           1 Kings 10:14-25



Later, after Solomon's death, his son, Rehoboam, ascended to the throne.


Here's what happened:


After Rehoboam's position as king was established and he became strong, he and all Israel with him abandoned the law of the LORD.

Then the prophet Shemaiah came to Rehoboam and to the leaders of Judah who had assembled in Jerusalem...and told them, "This is what the LORD says, 'You have abandoned Me; therefore I now abandon you to Shishak.'"


Because they had been unfaithful to the LORD, Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem in the fifth year of King Rehoboam.


With 1200 chariots and sixty thousand horsemen and the innumerable troops of Libyans, Sukkites and Cushites that came with him from Egypt, he captured the fortified cities of Judah and came as far as Jerusalem....

When Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem, he carried all the treasures of the temple of the LORD and the treasures of the royal palace.

He took everything, including the gold shields Solomon had made.

So King Rehoboam made bronze shields to replace them and assigned these to the commanders of the guard on duty at the entrance to the royal palace.

Whenever the king went to the LORD's temple, the guards went with him, bearing the shields, and afterwards they returned them to the guard room.

    -- 2 Chronicles 12:1-11


Their king had abandoned the law of the LORD (the text says, the king "and all Israel with him") and so lost his country's priceless heritage...all that Rehoboam's grandfather, King David, had set aside for the temple and royal treasuries, and all that his father, King Solomon, had later acquired...all gone...in the fifth year of his reign...what several generations accomplished was squandered in just a few years...

And those solid gold shields....

It's fascinating to imagine -- the guards probably polished the bronze to shining perfection -- but they were still bronze, not gold!

Who were they trying to fool?

So the guards, who had previously carried solid gold shields to escort their King, now carried cheap imitations!




Do we do this? Let what is priceless slip through our fingers and hold on tenaciously to what is without value? Polish it up and try to make it look good?

Not acknowledging that what we are grasping is only a substitute, a counterfeit, not the real thing!

Letting go of the important and holding on to the trivial.

It's time to reverse that - right now!

Life Stinks!? - Max Lucado

"Yes, life stinks. But it won't forever.  As one of my friends likes to say, 'Everything will work out in the end. If it's not working out, it's not the end.'

  In the meantime, don't overreact. Psalm 37:7 says, 'Be still in the presence of the Lord and wait patiently for Him to act. Don't worry about evil people who prosper, or fret about their wicked schemes.'

  This is a toxic world. But neither do we want to join the Chicken Little chorus of gloom and doom: 'The sky is falling! The sky is falling!'

  Somewhere between Pollyanna and Chicken Little, between denial and blatant panic, stands the levelheaded, clear-thinking, still-believing follower of Christ.

  Psalm 27:3 says, 'My heart shall not fear -- though war arises against me, yet I will be confident!'

  Confident in Him!"

The Potters and the Gardeners - Charles Spurgeon

                   The Potters and Gardeners - Charles Spurgeon

These were the potters and those who dwelt among plants and hedges, who lived there in the king's service
             (1 Chronicles 4:23).


Potters were among the ranks of manual workers, but the king needed potters and therefore they were elevated to royal service, although the material upon which they worked was nothing but clay.

In the same way we also may be engaged in the most menial part of the Lord's work, but it is a great privilege to do anything for the King; and therefore we will play our part, hoping that, even though we live among the pots, we will soar in the service of our Master.

They may have wanted to live in the city, amid its life, society and refinement, but they kept their assigned places because they were doing the King's work.

There is no ideal place for us to serve God except the place He sets us down.

We are not to run from it on whim or sudden notion, but we should serve the Lord by being in it a blessing to those among whom we live.

These potters and gardeners had royal company, for they lived with the king, and although among hedges and plants, they lived with the king there.

No lawful place or gracious occupation, however menial, can keep us from communion with our Lord.

In hovels, run-down neighborhoods, and jails, we may keep company with the King.

In all works of faith we can count upon Jesus' fellowship.

It is when we are in His work that we can reckon on His smile.

You unknown workers who are serving the Lord amid the dirt and wretchedness of the lowest of the low, be of good cheer, for jewels have often been found among rubbish, earthen pots have been filled with heavenly treasures, and ugly weeds have been transformed into precious flowers.

Dwell with the King and do His work, and when He writes His chronicles, your name shall be recorded.

[The names of these potters and gardeners are recorded for us in 1 Chronicles, chapter 4.  The book was written for the exiles who returned from Babylonian captivity  when King Cyrus gave them the opportunity and means to go back to their homes in Judea. The author wanted them to know they were part of God's special treasure, His Chosen People who would come back to Israel and prepare for the coming Messiah. After all, it was prophesied that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem and would be reared in Nazareth and would attend Temple in Jerusalem. They were, each one, a part of God's eternal plan. Just like we are!]