Bad Crap for Christians ...

Why do bad things happen to good people?  So that premise is off right from the start.  There are no “good” people, there are just people.  But surely there is a difference between an old fart who has lived a long life and done many misdeeds; and some innocent child who has yet to explore their potential for good or for evil.  Surely the innocent child deserves better outcomes, less pain, less trauma, less anxiety, and a lot less death.  None of us want the old guy to contract cancer, we sympathize with him.  But compare that feeling of empathy with a picture of a toddler in a pediatric oncology unit at a hospital and I dare you to hold back the tears.  Now compound the feeling by imagining that toddler to be your child.  That kind of pain is likely as bad as it gets.  As a parent you would do everything in your power to prevent that scenario from ever happening.  But how?  That disease does not know who you are.  It does not care who you are, or that it is your child who will contract it.  There is no taking their place, because the disease does not move from one victim to spare another.  It stays there, until it kills its host, and never so much as bats an eyelash.  A fully indiscriminate killer, on a murder/suicide mission, with no conscience, and no empathy with which you could plead your case.

Part of the pain you suffer as a parent is helplessness.  Your total inability to do anything to prevent it.  Your total inability to redirect the outcome.  You can participate in treatment.  You can do everything right, and still suffer that ultimate loss.  Where is God then?  Christians who do not understand the nature of God make a distinction between believers and non-believers in cases like this.  Yes, there are Christians who think the value of a believing child is worth more, or deserves more, than the child who does not believe yet.  The disobedient parents must somehow bare responsibility for the suffering of their child.  As if Christian parents make no mistakes, or worse, make the same mistakes as those who do not believe in Jesus, continually.  But this is all wrong.  Cancer does not care if you are a Christian or not.  It ignores belief systems, and lifestyles.  It may be brought on by certain behaviors.  But it is not prevented by any of them.

The vegetarian may avoid the cancers that lay in the meat the rest of us eat.  But the cancers that come from pollution in soil and water, get right into the same food supply we are all eat anyway.  Radiated stuff gets us all, and no government is truthful about where it is, or how well it is controlled.  Sure, smoking is a veritable death sentence from lung cancer, and nearly as lethal is second hand smoke.  But not all air you breathe is as clean as you would wish.  Healthy lifestyles bring a better life, but do nothing to prevent cancer or many other diseases of a lethal variety.  Genetics trumps nearly everything.  You would think Christians can beat most of this, by the power of prayer if nothing else.  And sometimes this is true.  But not ALL the times, so what then.

But if you think your powerlessness is bad, imagine having all the power in the universe, and then dealing with it.  Imagine being able to fix it, but knowing that fixing it now, breaks it later.  Case in point; Joseph the earthly father of Jesus must have been very loved by our Savior.  It is believed Joseph died at some point in the life of Jesus, before His ministry begins.  Jesus could raise the dead.  Why would He leave Joseph, His own earthly dad, to rot in the earth?  Mary would suffer because of this.  There would be less provisions for her because of this.  Do any of us seriously believe Jesus left Joseph in the ground, because of lack of love?  Why not just pull him out like Lazarus, and just keep on going.  Do it quietly, in secret.  Or at least heal Joseph from whatever disease he had before it got him.  But Jesus does not, despite how much He must have loved Joseph.  He left him in the dirt.  You can bet the heart of Mary broke when Joseph died.  You can bet she wept for the only man who ever believed her and “knew” her story was true.  It appears she never remarried, preferring to wait for reunification in heaven at the end of all things.

We should have thought about this case, and realized the outcomes we would want, are not always the outcomes we get.  What if Jesus raised Joseph, and late in life, Joseph abandons his faith?  You could argue that it is the free-will of Joseph to make that choice.  But the same free-will choice Joseph made at the time of his death, was also his choice, and perhaps then he chose to cling to his faith.  Perhaps if Joseph did not see a decade or two more of Roman horror he remains faithful.  But once raised from the grave the horror of life then changes the mind of Joseph over time.  When is it better for Joseph to die, sooner when he believes, or later when he does not?  Hezekiah begged for more time, and got it.  He did not lose that faith, but his heart was broken by what he saw in the lives of his sons, and his nation.  Was it better for Hezekiah to find a peaceful sleep in the Lord earlier, or cling to life and witness the horror of evil so close to home?

We hate the suffering.  So does God.  God sees how evil is responsible for all the suffering.  For everything from the greed that leads to pollution, to the weakness that embraces self-destructive behavior, to the virus’ and diseases that should have never existed.  God sees how hate leads the powerful to destroy the weak for no reason that could ever matter.  God sees the cycle of sin, that begins so small, and ends so horrifically.  And the mind of God must then be on how best to eradicate sin forever in the universe.  God does not just want to kill the patient, but to kill the sin within the patient, and keep the patient alive.  And God does not just measure life in this world, He measures it in the eternal world as that is the ONLY place that actually matters.  As hard as it is for us to taste death in this world, or see our family taste it, it is a far worse thing to see that become something eternal, instead of something so brief.

So Jesus cannot always do what He wants for us in the here and now.  But He ALWAYS does what we need in the eternal point of view, the one that matters.  And as hard as it is for us to endure the bad crap that comes our way, it is harder for Jesus to see us endure it, and let it happen, in order that it works together for our more important good.  Harder for Him, because He has the power to fix it now.  But must delay, in order to fix it forever, later.  Matthew tells the story of a loss like this.  And it is not just some random friend of Jesus, but His cousin.  This was the first Christian.  This was the first person to carry the gospel to the river Jordan, and cry out to the nation to repent, and make straight the way of the Lord.  John had fire.  John was a prophet.  John was the most effective preacher ever born.  He lived His message.  He was absolutely humble.  He recognized Jesus for who Jesus was.  John believed Mary.  John sent his own disciples to follow Jesus.  John nearly convinced Herod to do the right thing.  But for all his belief, John still died, beheaded as the first Christian martyr.  Sometimes bad crap comes right to your doorstep.

Matthew picks up in chapter fourteen of his gospel beginning in verse 01 saying … “At that time Herod the tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus, [verse 2] And said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead; and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him.”  This begins as a ghost story.  Herod thinks Jesus is actually John the Baptist back from the dead, doing miracles only a supernatural being could ever perform.  And Herod is afraid, perhaps very afraid.  Miracles tend to unnerve the guilty who have no way to explain them, and every reason to fear them, particularly when they have yet to repent, and yet to change what they were doing wrong in the first place.  Who but a ghost could pull off the deeds of Jesus in the mind of Herod?  Herod missed redemption entirely, so fear alone gripped him for the guilty conscience he held to.

Matthew enumerates further in verse 3 saying … “For Herod had laid hold on John, and bound him, and put him in prison for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife. [verse 4] For John said unto him, It is not lawful for thee to have her. [verse 5] And when he would have put him to death, he feared the multitude, because they counted him as a prophet.”  Herod did not enjoy being called out publicly as an adulterer.  At first he was mad and would have killed John to shut him up.  But having John in prison allowed Herod to come visit him, and the more Herod listened to John, the more he became convinced John was right, and he needed to do something to fix the situation.  While the crowds delayed the hand of Herod at first, a growing conscience within him delayed it later.  And that became a situation considered way too dangerous by the adulterous woman to be tolerated.  Herod may no longer have wanted to kill John, in fact he refused to.  But Herodias wanted him dead on a silver platter.

Matthew continues the story in verse 6 saying … “But when Herod's birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod. [verse 7] Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask. [verse 8] And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist's head in a charger.”  Salome asks her mom what to ask for, likely interested in jewels or land.  But evil mom knows the truth, if John lives, and Herod repents, they will be sent back to Phillip with nothing, likely ostracized, perhaps stoned.  So if Salone wants to live to spend the wealth Herod may still bestow on her later, they need John dead now.  And a young girl asks for the most horrific thing sin always results in, death.

Matthew continues in verse 9 saying … “ And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath's sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her. [verse 10] And he sent, and beheaded John in the prison. [verse 11] And his head was brought in a charger, and given to the damsel: and she brought it to her mother.”  Herod was sorry.  The king was sorry.  This was not a gleeful Herod bathing himself in the blood of the man who called him out for his sin.  This was a king worried too much about going back on his word, to do what he knew was right.  So for sake of ego and reputation, Herod did the unthinkable to Herod.  And John was beheaded alone in prison.  Bad crap coming the way of John through no fault of his own.  Unless shutting up is considered the alternative by modern Christians.  Better to shut up than lose life, or jobs, or promotions, or friends, or position in society.  Better to keep your Christianity on the down low than lose what you have through the loss of favor with the world.  But when a Christian loves the non-believer, they are compelled to love them.  How can you keep your mouth shut then?

John had a higher mission of conversion and ironically he was right on the doorstep of success with Herod.  It was the wicked women who had no use for God that wanted him killed.  Imagine if this story went differently.  Imagine if Herod had the strength to throw those witches out on their butts, and truly repent of what he was doing.  Herod would have become the first Christian King.  And perhaps the sequence that ended the life of Jesus would have had to leave Herod out of the whole thing, lest Herod protect the Jesus, cousin of John, who John introduces Herod to.  Instead of being part of the bad crap that came to Christ, Herod might have had no part in it at all.  But Herod succumbs to his carnal urges, all too easily satisfied by women seeking to protect wealth and standing.  And John dies now, Jesus later.  And faith altogether is lost.

Matthew concludes in verse 12 saying … “And his disciples came, and took up the body, and buried it, and went and told Jesus.”  And here begins the worst kick in the faith His disciples will ever suffer.  Dude!  Dude this is your cousin, the greatest preacher this nation has ever seen, until You that is.  Just go put his head back on his body, and breathe life back into him, and let’s get going again.  We know You can do it, we have seen You do it for other folks.  Over time the disciples will do it too.  So why not just resurrect John the Baptist and show the nation how great You truly are.  We know You care about him.  We know You love him.  He is Your cousin for goodness sake.  And while we are at it, let’s go raise up Joseph too, and make a real showing of how great Your power is.  How can You just sit there?  How can You do nothing for one of Your own?  How could You let this bad crap happen to John, and Joseph, and have the ability to fix it, but do nothing … at least now.

But this is where the lens of the vision of God is so much wider and farther than our own.  Jesus knows He will see Joseph again because He intends to raise him up Himself, in just a little while (from His perspective).  Jesus knows He will raise John again, because He intends to do it Himself, in just a little while.  Both of them raised to perfection to a home in heaven, that will forever allow them to be close to Himself.  He will shower them with love.  And no one will ever be able to stop that shower again.  No more bad crap ever.  Raising them up to a world steeped in Roman horror would not be a favor.  Having them face the decades that follow would not be a benefit to them, only a selfish act to Himself so that He could reduce the pain of their loss in the short term.  It was not best for John, or Joseph.  They would sleep and in the blink of an eye find the glory of His second appearing.  They had no concept of the passage of time.  It would be immediate for them, as it is for every believer who has ever died in the 6000 years of our history.  Dying sucks.  But being dead, is like having fallen asleep at night, in the blink of an eye the morning is here, and you wake up.

Cancer sucks.  The suffering it brings sucks.  Cancer was never supposed to exist, and it is decidedly not the will of God, but the invention of His enemy.  As is all disease and suffering and decay and death.  The pain sin has brought to this world, and to us, is the natural result of turning away from the perfect happiness of God to find “another way”.  Here is where “other” ways end up.  And while bad crap does happen to Christians.  There is something Christians have that is an advantage our non-believing friends so desperately need.  While we may sit in the same oncology units, and even mortuaries, we have a hope and a view of the final state of things not everyone else understands.  We know we are loved, even in our pain, by a God who feels every tear ten times more than we ever will.  Our true “Dad” longs to see our pain gone forever, and He is working to see that occur for us, and in us, and in the patient beside us who may have never heard that hope that way before.  Whether He heals us or them now, or drives all the pain away when we wake up in that resurrection morning, there will come a time of no more pain, no more death, and no more bad crap ever again for anyone.  Perhaps our hope is the testimony the patient beside us needs more than anything else in their world, and we have it to offer today.  Can we shut up, and still say we love them?

 

Fields of Perfection [part four] ...

Some journey’s have unintended consequences, and some unexpected benefits.  Imagine yourself planning a first-time trip to London England for your family.  None of you have ever traveled oversees, but you go about all the normal things we would expect to do.  We arrange a passport for everyone.  We make airline reservations, and hotel accommodations.  We arrange for local transport, though expect to take taxi’s and the tube for the most part.  These are the things we expect to have to do, in order to take a journey to London.  But then something unexpected happens, an Ambassador from France arrives at your doorstep the eve before your trip.  They knock on your door and tell you that historians in France have been working on tracing the ancestors of King Louis and believe you may be the last living direct descendant.  They want you to come to France (courtesy of the French government), for an all-expenses-paid first-class trip to explore your heritage.

Surprised would hardly be the word for it.  You agree to go.  You are taken on a supersonic plane that arrives in 2 hours, much less than you expected, and you ride first-class all the way.  You are taken to the Palace of Versailles outside of Paris where Louis spent much of his life.  But not to tour it.  To stay in it.  You are to sleep in a bed made of down feathers that measures about 15 feet across.  Every room in this huge castle now belongs to you.  Beyond this, the Hope Diamond which once belonged to your ancestor is now laid out upon your neck.  The historical wealth of France is transferred to you.  This does not happen because you planned for it.  It did not happen because you deserved it.  It happens because of something outside of your control entirely, it happens because of your ancestry, and happens because of something inside of you that you were entirely unaware might be there.   You did not know you were an heir to a throne, but you come to discover it by the hard work of somebody else.

Most of us do not dream of becoming an heir to a long expired French throne.  It did not work out that well for King Louis after all.  The unexpected consequence of power is not something uplifting to human nature, it is something that tends to tear what is important in us down.  But it turns out, you, and each member of your family, are in fact heirs to a different throne, and direct descendants of the King who still sits on it.  And the journey of discovery, or reconciliation with that throne, is what that ambassador knocking at your door, wants you to begin.  This journey, like the imaginary one we described above, will happen not because you plan for it.  There is nothing you can do to get ready for it.  You are only asked if you will go, or not.  What happens then is in the hands of the King who desperately wishes to meet you in person; and show you what He has in store for you.  He wants so much to put a crown upon your head.  Not one made of silly hope diamonds that twinkle only when light hits it, but one made of stars which themselves shine brighter than our sun from within. 

This journey does not happen because you deserve it.  You cannot earn it.  It is the gift of the King, to you, His long-lost child.  And your prince-ship (or princess) was something buried in you, that your mortal mind can scarcely imagine, let alone comprehend.  How do I know?  Because the perspective of the farmer is always greater than the perspective of the seed.  Jesus Himself reminded us of this.  Matthew continues a series of journey-related parables told by Christ in chapter 13 of his gospel.  As discussed so far these journeys are not quick, or instant.  They are told in the growth process of a Farmer and His seeds.  But progression, or rather transformation, is what occurs in each of them.  This one picks up in verse 31 with Jesus saying … “Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: [verse 32] Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”

A short story as stories go.  But the point is revealing.  The farmer once again is Jesus Christ, as it has been in all the parables that precede it.  The field is the world.  The seed is us, that is, anyone who would choose to accept being the seed of the Farmer.  The farmer does the planting, and in this case, the seed hardly recognizes what it will become.  From the perspective of the seed, they are the tiniest of all their peers, the least of seeds in fact.  This seed looks at other seeds to determine its own value, but has no idea what it would become.  You can imagine other herb seeds laughing at the tiny little grain of mustard seed; other seeds imagine themselves bigger because they begin the journey bigger already.  They think themselves ahead on this journey because of how big they are today.  But not so.  Seeds are ALL tiny, especially in the hand of the farmer.  But after the transformation, the tiny grain of mustard seed becomes a great tree.  It gets so large other species like birds, can actually make a home in its branches.  Hard to do that in a basil herb, or perhaps oregano, or garlic.

The point of this parable is that the seed does not really know who it is.  The seed has no idea what it is intended to become.  Only the farmer knows that.  And ONLY the farmer can see to it, that destination is what occurs, guiding the transformation from seed to tree – faithfully watering, fertilizing, providing sunlight, etc..  Our farmer does the work.  The journey is not ours because we deserve it.  And as these parables reveal, not even because we can imagine it.  Our imagination is stunted by our past, and the diversion of our focus away from our farmer.  We start looking at who we are today, and see only the least of all seeds (in or out of the church).  Looking at self does not make the journey happen.  Looking to the light of the farmer does.  But the great news is that, it does not matter if you can grasp who you really are.  It does not change a thing.  You are heir to a throne whether you believe it or not.  The journey will reveal it.  All you need do is begin.

Jesus decides to make another analogy to bring home the point in a way perhaps his female audience will also understand better.  He continues in verse 33 saying … “Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.”  The dough has no idea what leaven will do to it.  The dough had no plans to go anywhere or be anything greater than it already was.  But introduce the transformative power of the Kingdom of Heaven into the dough, and rise it will do.  The dough will never understand that process, neither will we.  It was not the work of the dough to make itself rise, it was the introduction of the leaven of the Kingdom of Heaven that made that happen.  Only Jesus understands the work He is doing, and what results it will have.  We do not.  But the rising is guaranteed. 

Transformative love, that is love, not content to leave us in our sin, with our pain, and the death we embrace because of it.  That love of God, instead removes our pain, our sin, and even our death.  It grants life eternal.  Not just eternal “existence”, but eternal “life”.  Real life.  And it begins the moment it is introduced.  The end of the journey does not arrive in an instant, but the benefits of the journey begin to be seen immediately and throughout, ever growing towards the fields of perfection He has in mind.  Perfection is not just intended for one or two, it will in fact be seen throughout all of heaven, in each and every one of us, its residents.  So if all will see it.  Then all need not wait to see it develop within them in the here-and-now.  It can begin today.  These stories were designed to illustrate these things to us.  But have they?

Matthew makes a commentary on these parables of Jesus, now four of them on the same theme, as he states in verse 34 saying … “All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them: [verse 35] That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.”  The Truth is here revealed.  The beauty of the gospel, kept secret from the foundation of the world is here revealed.  This is the battle plan Jesus had when Satan will still Lucifer.  These are the plans Jesus had to keep hidden from Lucifer, asking Lucifer to trust Him rather than grow envy and break trust, resulting the in invention of sin and evil and death and war.

That our Savior and Lord would provide a way of our escape from the addiction of sin, was the plans for our transformation, created before we were.  Man was created in spite of knowing what Love would cost.  Man was created with free will, our God desperately hoping we would not break trust with Him, as Lucifer had done – even though we chose it as well.  But with our fall, was already created a way for us to reconcile, and learn to trust in our God once again.  To re-establish trust on our part in our God to truly save us – to do what He has promised to do.  Each of us face the same challenge and tests Lucifer did, and Adam did, and Jesus did.  We are all asked whether we will trust God, in spite of what we think or feel or believe.  As we learn to have that kind of trust, we learn to make a life where sin will never enter in to it again, not in the eons of time we will face in eternal life.  Our trust in God will be so great, sin will have no vehicle for entry ever again.

These were the secrets revealed to us in a series of parables.  And Satan must have wept at the beauty of how great the love of God is, for us, and once for himself before he abandoned it completely.  The seed does not have to understand everything, not even who it is.  The seed has only to look to the farmer, and watch what the farmer has in store for it, letting the transformation truly begin.

 

Eternal Dependence ...

Seeing through a glass darkly does not reveal the whole of the scene.  While we remain in this world, the process of His perfection wrought in us, transforming who we are, into who we were intended to become will open our eyes.  But it opens them slowly.  We seldom instantly see, all that is possible to see.  We carry baggage.  We rely on our accumulated wisdom.  To learn to depend upon God to the point where we are willing to let go of everything we think we know; in order that He may lead us into what His brand of wisdom truly is … takes time.  So confident are we as we utter the words … “thus saith the Lord.”  But very few of us would consider ourselves to be prophets of the Most High.  More often than not, we base our confidence in our interpretations of scripture, which after much study and tradition has evolved a certainty within us that there could be no other way to see the texts we espouse.  And like our Pharisee forefathers, we take pride in our certainty.  We use it to evaluate the spiritual discernment of others, yet hesitate to put even our own “knowledge” upon the alter of humility in letting Christ teach us, that which may prove different from what we expected.

We know not, that we are blind, and poor, and naked.  It is hard to see our poverty when we choose not to see it.  It is hard to see our destitution and naked spiritual condition when we constantly tell ourselves that we “know the truth” … not the Truth of Jesus Christ, but the truth of our doctrinal integrity.  To see then, becomes critical to know our condition.  To see then, becomes the first step towards knowing what Truth really is.  We need the abolition of darkness, and a strong embrace of His light.  We need it in this world.  And as John was blessed to witness, we will have it literally in our next one.  Towards the end of the chapter 21 and beginning of chapter 22, to John was revealed a picture of heaven, our eternal home.  In this revelation was contained what humanity would need, not just now, but forever.  The revelation was shared perhaps to show us, that even in the context of forever; our dependence upon God never really goes away.

So in chapter 21 and verse 23 of his book of Revelations of Jesus Christ, John begins … “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.”  How salient a point for us today.  Scripture is the word of God to us.  Scripture is not God.  What lights up the 1500 mile-across-city of our eternal home is the Lamb of God.  It is the glory of God.  There is not some book of life, or copy of the Bible, or other written sacred scroll mounted on the top of a hill in order that all light should come from its pages.  Instead, the living God, that the scripture paints a very detailed picture of, is the source of the light.  The word of God is a reflection of who He is, it is not a replacement for Him.  We are to learn from His word, not to worship our own wisdom derived from its study.  Our God is our light.  Not just for a day, or “while He is around us”, or when He is not visiting some distant planet.  Our God is our light continually.  The city of heaven is well lit, by the very presence and glory of our God.

We are able to navigate the streets of the city.  We are able to see where we are going and not blindly bump into walls and obstacles, because of the light provided to us from Christ Himself.  What a model for the study of scripture today.  As we fully submit our will, our decisions, our desires, over to God, we enable Him to re-teach us what each scripture was meant to say.  What we thought of before as “simple”, can be re-examined and find the depths of profound thought and study.  Imagine what it means to truly know what the simple text “Jesus wept” really means.  Yes, He literally cried.  But there is so much more meaning bound up in that little verse than a mere historical recollection of tears shed on a donkey, or in front of the tomb of His friend.  “Thou shalt not kill” … seems very straightforward.  But past submitting our “wisdom” to Christ, that one edict contains so much more meaning.  It encompasses more than murder, but hate, war, and even death itself.  Our God desires life to be eternal, killing and even death were never supposed to be a part of our existence.  Sin brought these things, God didn’t.

No matter what text we think we know, in the perfect light of Christ, there is more for us to learn.  Sometimes the process of that learning changes what we used to think.  Belief in our God, and submission of our will to His, enables learning – it does not end it.  We will forever study.  We will forever see truth in the light of His presence.  So why wait?  Why limit what God can teach us in the here and now, because we prefer our blindness and stubborn interpretation of truth, over His intention to lead us to the Truth that can ONLY be found in Jesus Christ.  The only distinction between ourselves, the modern churches that call themselves Christian and believe they are right to the exclusion of all other faiths, and our Pharisee forefathers (who had an equally valid claim) – will be determined in whether or not we actually allow Christ to lead our wisdom, or remain silent in the face of our so-great certainty.  Our fundamental trust must be based solely in Christ, not in our doctrines.  It is His doctrines we seek to learn.  This must be done ONLY in His light, following not leading, and in a humility few of us have yet to adopt and appreciate.

John continues in verse 24 saying … “And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.”  Notice that nations of the saved, are saved, because they walk in the light of it, in the light of Christ.  Our journey to our ultimate heavenly home begins here as we make a choice to follow Christ.  In so doing, we allow Him to transform us, surrendering more and more of who we are, until His glory shines through us.  We begin to reflect His light and love to others.  We begin to feel within ourselves a passion for loving others that did not used to exist.  Where once our calloused hearts knew little expression, now we find a yearning and caring to get deep into the lives and interests of those around us.  If there is a need un-met, we want to find it, and meet it.  In so doing, we begin to emulate the life of Christ without even realizing we are doing it.  We honor God by loving others, and even in our eternal home, we bring this with us into His paradise.

John continues in verse 25 … “And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there. [verse 26] And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it.”  In the time of John, city gates were closed at night, for the fear of what might sneak in while residents slept.  In our eternal home, there is no night.  There is no time when the residents are unaware of their surroundings.  And further what there is in constant supply is a deep abiding love of others.  It is this “glory” and this “honor” that is brought into the city by ALL the nations who reside there.  There is no more spiritual slumber, and no need for the physical downtime when immersed in the light of Christ.  It is a model for us today.  We need not consider the limits of our humanity when considering how to love others.  For we need not rely upon human strength, will, or motive to see loving others accomplished.  We can instead, lean on Jesus Christ, and take on His strength, His will, His motives and let them replace our own.  Living in His light, does not need to wait.  It is available to us today.  We need but ask.

John writes in verse 27 … “And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.”  John reminds us that the time of sin, disobedience, and death itself will be a thing of the past in the scenes revealed to him.  Nothing that defiles will ever see the inside of that city.  If something within us would cause defilement of any kind, it must be removed, before we enter those gates, before we become residents.  This removal of what would defile us, is the very process of our salvation.  We are being saved from ourselves, and from the slavery that binds us to self-love.  We are being made free to love others, and only others, never self.  For the love of self, is at the root of everything that defiles.

John continues the scene in the beginning of chapter 22 and verse 1 saying … “And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.”  Humanity does not long survive without water.  We are largely made up of it.  To remain healthy, we need a fairly sizeable quantity of it every day in our diets.  Despite being in perfection, the very water we need, the water of life is not a random gift for us to enjoy.  It has an origin.  It flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb.  The source of our greatest needs comes from our God.  He gives us light to see.  Now He adds water for us to drink.  Our needs do not terminate at the end of this sinful world.  We are still going to be human, perfectly re-created humans, but humans still.  We will still need water and light.  And so here is John stating that for all eternity, our greatest needs will ALWAYS be met by Jesus Christ.  We do not “create” the water we need.  Instead we will drink the water He “gives us”.

John continues in verse 2 … “In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”  Our next greatest need is food.  Here John reveals that the tree of life has 2 trunks (perhaps symbolism for God the Father and Son) that are located on either side of the river.  The tree of life yields 12 different fruits, one each month.  It is through the eating of this food that our lives are sustained.  It is the reason why Adam and Eve were denied access to the tree of life after sin, because God did not want them to have to live forever in the condition of sin.  And you will recall that Adam and Eve lived nearly nine hundred years after being denied access.  You and I will be eating every month.  But I believe the symbolism is deeper than this.  Our lives, our existence, is not found apart from God.  We are not immortal of our own.  We eat this fruit and live forever, we are not immortal creatures without need of God, or food, or water, or light.  We are dependent creatures, whose needs are met because of the love of our Creator.  When God breathed breath into Adam he became a living soul, not an immortal one.  Adam had to eat from the tree of life to sustain his existence forever.  Now, even past the end of things we know, we still have that need.  We need to eat, and this food in particular to sustain our lives forever.

John continues the thought in verse 3 writing … “And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:”  The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.  The curse that occurred in Babel, which differentiated our languages, and altered our appearances, will be once and for all be undone.  In our present condition, each of us naturally assumes that our ethnicity will be the dominant one, resetting the rest of humanity to resemble those of our race.  But in the light of heaven who is to say what man was intended to resemble.  Case in point, the light of God is referenced by John several times to be green in color, resembling that of a Jasper stone.  Hard to imagine humanity tilting green, but why put a limit on it?  And why assume we are even capable today of discerning the spectrum of colors we will recognize when perfection removes the curse of our blindness from us.  Does it really matter if we are darkest black, or lily white?  Would it really even matter if we were all emerald forest green?  Whatever our appearance then, it will be the perfection God intended.  Our beauty will emanate from within as our love for others will be what makes us precious, unique, and valued without measure.

John wraps up his vision of heaven by focusing on what matters most as he writes in verse 4 … “And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. [verse 5] And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.”  The most important characteristic of heaven is that we will see the face of God without any veil, or any filter between us and Him.  We will have His image and name ingrained in our foreheads, in our thinking, in the essence of who we are.  We will see without the need of artificial light, because the real source of light will illuminate our world and our lives.  And we will reign, not as kings who seek the services of others, but as kings who delight in serving others.  We will serve this way forever.  Forever in service to our God,  Forever in service to each other.  Forever finding delight in the perfection of loving another.

This is what makes heaven, heaven.  The beauty of the architecture pales in comparison to the beauty of love.  The idea of gold, and precious gems, are dwarfed by the beauty of a human heart intent on serving others.  The ability to see God, to live with God, to enjoy the presence of God every day; this is what makes eternal life, a life worth living.  Even in our world, we understand there are many kinds of love.  We have all experienced to some extent the love of a parent, of a child, of a friend, of a lover, or a sibling.  How many more varieties of love might we yet discover?  Over the course of many years of marriage it is possible to find that you love your spouse more today, than you did in the past.  And every single day that statement is both surprising and still true.  You cannot conceive that it will happen tomorrow yet again, but it does.  Heaven will be like that.  No limit to love, no limit to joy, no limit to discovery, to creation, to the boundaries of exploration – in short, no limits at all.  In the perfect freedom of loving others, there is no need for laws that limit behavior.

Our concepts of heaven are often warped by the self-centered desires we cling to today.  We admire the gold and ideas of no more pain with eternal life.  But heaven is not intended to be a place where we spend eternity trying to fill a hole of greed that will never be filled.  Heaven is not a place where we can live forever, constantly plotting how we gain our next thing.  It is not a place where perfect creations provide us an endless slew of candidates to lust over.  Our selfish tendencies are the things we are being made free from.  Our salvation comes as we depend on God to save us from us.  It is our dependence upon Christ to save us from who we are, that allows Him to do just that.  When we look in the mirror for salvation, we find only destruction.  To depend upon self, is to lose.  To depend upon Christ is to live.  The lesson of heaven itself reinforces this idea of dependence for all of eternity. 

It is Christ who gives us eternal light.  It is Christ who gives us the water of life, and the tree of life.  It is Christ who will sustain our lives forever and ever through His gifts.  And in this world, our dependence is no less great, it is more.  It is Christ who will save us from who we are.  It is Christ alone who can teach us His Truth in His word.  We must abandon human wisdom, and human strength, and certainty in what we think we know.  Instead we embrace the humility of trusting in Him to teach us what we need to know, and when we need to know it.  Intellect will not save us.  Doctrine will not save us.  Our force of “will” cannot save us.  Only Jesus Christ can remake who we are from the inside out.  If He does not, it will simply not get done.  Our faith must be that He will do as He promised to do.  Our part is to let Him do it.  Our role is to depend upon Christ.  That dependence begins in the here and now, but as John has revealed, it will never be over.  We will live eternally depending upon the love of Christ to sustain us.

His revelations of heaven were over … but his messages and counsel to us was not …