the heavenly reality (12-9-06)

"Heaven." What a mis-understood word this is!

For some, 'heaven' is simply a warm, fuzzy, good, old-fashioned or positive feeling they get when things happen to be going their way. Many others define 'heaven' in ways that are not unlike the Greek/Roman idea of the 'after-life' - in which your ghostly 'soul' floats away on a cloud.

Not only am I nervous about several overly definitive Christian definitions of 'heaven', (as if we could know exactly what it is like!) I'm also nervous that we may often mix one or both of the above ideas with the ideas we get from the Bible.

The promise of eternal life for God's people is clear, but the Bible was not written to give us a encyclopedic definition of it. Rather than that, we are given pictures, glimpses and/or images of what it is. The biblical 'heaven' is more lasting than a fleeting 'shot in the arm' of cheerful glee, and infinitely more real than your soul flying around in a dis-embodied realm of clouds.

Heaven is the place where God is. It is not sitting at the far corner of the universe, but rather, a completely different dimension altogether. What seems to separate heaven and earth is not light-years of distance in space (or whatever), but rather the current condition of earth and it's inhabitants. Even still, God's dimension 'breaks out' onto ours in various ways. Heaven breaking out onto earth, is like God's space 'overlapping' with ours. Dwelling with His people in the tabernacle, behind the veil in the Temple and now in our 'hearts' by His Spirit are all examples of this.

Now, God's space wasn't intended to merely overlap with ours. God's intention was to 'share' His 'space' with His image-bearing creatures - us (think Garden of Eden). Human rebellion and degradation has distorted the image of God, and has left us (along with the entire universe) in dire need of restoration of that image.

This is where it get's exciting...

Christ came (Himself a perfect expression of heaven and earth - God and man) and fulfilled what it meant to be the Image of God. His death defeated the power of evil, and His resurrected body is the 'first-fruits' of God's restored order of being! God's New Creation has begun! The reality of heaven has burst onto the scene, and it looks, feels and sounds like Jesus!

Indeed, the Christian hope of Heaven is not having spots of ecstatic bliss, and not soul-soaring in the sky. It is sharing God's life in a New Heaven and New Earth that has been resurrected, re-made, re-built and restored to God's intention.

That day is sure to come, but we don't have to sit on our bums and wait for it to come. Jesus begs us to pray that Day (even just a grain of it!) into Today. "Your Kingdom come. Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven." Every good deed we do in Jesus name and in the power of the Spirit (and only by His Spirit, thank you very much) is a fresh work of New Creation that is not in vain (1 Cor. 15 - end of chapter).