Hope

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What is the hope of the Christian message?  Is it like Plato’s followers and the Gnostics believed, that an elect are spiritual beings living in an irrelevant and corrupt world, just waiting to break these earthly bounds and obtain a purely enlightened spiritual existence?  Or conversely, is it that we are like rats trapped on a sinking ship, and there is nothing we can do save delude ourselves with a spiritual pie-in-the-sky way of thinking?  No, far from it.  Jewish thought believed that there was a day coming, when the heavenly kingdom would come down and the saved would be welcomed in, on a restored Earth, in a return to the Garden of Eden. And the early Christians found that they no longer needed to wait until the end of time and the final resurrection of all souls to see the beginnings of this. They were surprised and their world view shifted with the early resurrection of Jesus Christ: in history rather than at the end of it. And so he adopted us as sons and daughters who were to exist with the hope of our own resurrection and ushering into the kingdom of God, here on Earth.


What if we were to believe this?  What would our Christianity look like?  I think we would be more careful to take care of this Earth that God will make his home in.  I think we would be more bold in sharing this good news with others, so that they too can live in an eternity of bliss with us, praising our Father and living in community with one another.  I think we would be more apt to live each day, centered and outwardly reaching toward others, with thankful hearts for all that God has provided us.  And with however little or much we have, we would be thankful that God was pruning us and perfecting us as we face the hardships of life.  That he, in his infinite wisdom, has not provided a soft feel-good existence where we would never outgrow our spiritual childhood, but would grow and mature to become more Christ-like.


It is not spiritual pie in the sky.  It is the hope of the restoration of the world.  And we have an important part to play in it.

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