Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Heaven is not my Home

Living in Tallahassee Florida (the large buckle of the Bible belt), I have known a very limited scope of the gospel. Over the last few years, I have been exposed to a larger picture of the gospel. It is not that this new version is “postmodern” or “emergent”; rather it is a view of what I think is a larger slice of the global Christian pie. The following is an excerpt from Heaven is not my Home by Paul Marshall.

“It is an unbiblical idea that the earth doesn’t matter because we are going to go to heaven when we die. The Bible teaches that there will be a “new heaven and a new earth.” Our destiny is an earthly one: a new earth, an earth redeemed and transfigured. An earth reunited with heaven, but an earth, nevertheless.

If we think that the earth and everything on it is simply going to disappear, why labor long and hard to write something, perform something, build something, create something that will only be consumed by fire?”


For most of my Christian life, my thought had been that one day when I get out of here life is going to really be great. I was so focused on my “final destination” that I completely glazed over where I am today and what impact it has on eternity. Now as I read the scriptures, I am confronted with a truth that Jesus told his disciples to pray “Your (Yahweh) will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” There it is right there in front of me and I didn’t get it! So where does that leave me today? Once again another quote from Mr. Marshall.

“We the human beings, we ourselves, are part of creation. Our stewardship includes human life as well as the rest of nature. It includes Mozart as well as mountains: parliaments as well as porpoises: friendships as well as fields and forests. What began in the Garden of Eden culminates in a city- the New Jerusalem.”

God is reclaiming, restoring, and redeeming all of creation. I am called into this re-creation story. It is an amazing narrative of making all things new. God is the central character and I am honored to be in the supporting cast. I guess the part in the story that I missed was the created order, the birds, the trees, the streams and how they are integral to the story.

Maybe the creators of LOST wanting to make the island a character in the story have stumbled across a truth that is bigger than they can imagine.

5 comments:

kingsjoy said...

LOST!! Yeah, we're hooked now. Rented the first season, and downloaded the first 10 or so from season 2.

I like these thoughts from Paul Marshall. So much teaching out there moves our focus to the sweet by and by, and leaves us sitting here waiting for the rapture. You don't get that from Jesus' words.

GoteeMan said...

Michael -

Great post! So much of the southeastern church philosophy leaves us with "I'm saved... NOW WHAT???".

And if you happened to have been in a FUNdamentalist Evangelical (they put the FUN in Fundamental, by the way - or maybe they took it out!) background, it sure lends itself to a heapin' helpin' of legalism as well...

So basically, with all of that on my plate, I was hangin' around, trying to figure out something to do and feeling pretty rotten about being a low down dirty sinner saved by grace, when God ever so un-gently interrupted me and told me who I was and how he felt about me. Wow! It sounded Crazy - at first.

Anyway, with a new view of my identity, I got free - from pretty much all of it - the performance, the "worm" theology (you know, "I am a worm - a lowly, slimy, scummy worm, not at all worthy to approach God - YUCK!!!), the need to be busy, etc. and I am just about BEING now. Being who I am - wherever I am...

Thanks again for the post. Enjoyed it alot...

Jeff

Anne said...

“Your (Yahweh) will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
There's a Sufi version of the Lord's Prayer I read several years ago that I really like for its different perspective:

THE ARAMAIC PRAYER OF JESUS
The Lord's Prayer as translated from the Aramaic by Saadi Neil Douglas-Klotz of the Sufi Order of the West

O, Birther of the Cosmos, focus your light within us -- make it useful
Create your reign of unity now
Your one desire then acts with ours,
As in all light,
So in all forms,
Grant us what we need each day in bread and insight:
Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,
As we release the strands we hold of other's guilt.
Don't let surface things delude us,
But free us from what holds us back.
From you is born all ruling will,
The power and the life to do,
The song that beautifies all,
From age to age it renews.
I affirm this with my whole being.

Anne said...

After I posted that, Michael, I thought about how that translation reminds me of your writing.

kingsjoy said...

This is remarkable:

Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,
As we release the strands we hold of other's guilt.