Suffering
Soul, I think that when you first get to heaven you’ll sense a lack of something deeply important to you on the old earth: suffering. And you’ll respond ambivalently. You never enjoyed the pain, but in retrospect you saw its value in cracking and crushing your character into deeper and higher levels of Christ-likeness. You’ll remember
But here in the new heaven and new earth, the injustice and wailing and aloneness is over. How will I grow without these obstacles to overcome?
Soul, you’ll quickly learn that heaven needs no crucibles to melt and press Life from the Real You. God will still press, you will still have challenges and 3-steps-forward-2-steps-back projects. You will still grow in courage and love and hope and peace, but the Enemy will be astoundingly and utterly absent. There will be no wrongs to overcome, just countless paths toward infinite Completeness: God. You’ll never reach the end of every path, but each step or jump or flight or fall will happen in Father-Son-Spirit. Only and All.
You no longer need evil to be your foil, injustice to spark righteous anger and brave acts, wailing to inspire empathy and hospitality.
Don’t worry, Soul – you will grow into God.
Never being Him
Always becoming more Him
- the separations that led to more dependence on God and His people in far-off places with confounding customs
- the sicknesses that wracked your body until you screamed or curled fetally on the bathroom floor – and how you emerged valuing Jesus’ ministering hands, medicine-developers’ God-given skills, and the future health of heaven
- the tasks whose completion required years’ long grit and focused will that yielded greater self-control and pleasure in accomplishment
- the unjustly jailed friend and the infinitely despairing best friend who increased your compassion, empathy, and resolve to confront the Enemy on others’ behalf
But here in the new heaven and new earth, the injustice and wailing and aloneness is over. How will I grow without these obstacles to overcome?
Soul, you’ll quickly learn that heaven needs no crucibles to melt and press Life from the Real You. God will still press, you will still have challenges and 3-steps-forward-2-steps-back projects. You will still grow in courage and love and hope and peace, but the Enemy will be astoundingly and utterly absent. There will be no wrongs to overcome, just countless paths toward infinite Completeness: God. You’ll never reach the end of every path, but each step or jump or flight or fall will happen in Father-Son-Spirit. Only and All.
You no longer need evil to be your foil, injustice to spark righteous anger and brave acts, wailing to inspire empathy and hospitality.
Don’t worry, Soul – you will grow into God.
Never being Him
Always becoming more Him