How lovely is
your dwelling place, O Lord ...
I long, yes, I faint with longing
to enter the courts of the Lord.
Psalm 84:1-2
Do you tend to look up or down?
If you look down, you get mixed messages.
For example, I am looking down at an unbroken stretch of beach (on July 29) when I am writing this. There is beauty ... because God created good!
But I can also look down at this world and see oppression, violence, greed, and anger. There is an unholy mess because we keep un-creating what God created good. (God gave us dominion over his creation and sin continuously uncreates.)
We have to look down. It's where we live. And we need to do it with compassion. That's not only scripture's repeated call, it's how Jesus modeled doing life. He came down to dwell among us ... to comfort, heal, help, and instruct.
And yet the secret to life is to do this in light of heaven. When we see in our hearts the loveliness of God's dwelling place, it puts into perspective the transient nature of this world's pain. And when we long for God's eternal courts, we don't focus hopelessly on a broken world that is consuming lives.
God is real. Heaven wins. Look up and say, Thanks be to God!!
In Christ's Love,
a guy whose favorite quote
is from C. S. Lewis ...
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next… It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither."
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