Friday 29th May - So what is heaven really like?

DAILY BYTE

[Parts of today’s devotion have been adapted from John Ortberg].

Lewis Smedes, a renowned ethics professor and author, used to love to ask his students if they wanted to go to heaven when they died. Almost everyone would raise a hand. Then he would ask, “Be honest, now – who would like to go right not, today, before the sun goes down?”

There would be a little more ambiguity at this point. A few would raise their hands, but most people would opt for that moment to be delayed for quite a few years!

There is a final form to this question however. How many of you would like for the earth to get fixed up ... right now? No more babies with bloated bellies from hunger. No more stories about corporate greed and corruption. No more guilty, awkward distance between people of different races. No more souls tortured by addictions of one form or the other. No more battered children. No more ambulances. No more hearing a siren and wondering who its going for.

No more caskets. No more soldiers. No more wars. No obituary writers. Everybody has a place they love to live. Everybody has work they love to do – that brings joy and fulfilment. Everybody has people they love to befriend – connections that feel like family – no more orphans and widows.

How many would like for every sword to be beaten into plough shares? For the lions to lie down with the lambs? For peace to break out and justice to flow like water? For the defeat of death and the triumph of joy? And over all of this for there to be a God that we can all lovingly and meaningfully abide in and love each other through.

Well, if you want all of that then you want what it is that Jesus always talked about. Then you want heaven, and then you can become gripped and inspired by what is to come. You can be filled with joy and hope as you rejoice in God’s great plan to save not just you and me, but to redeem all of creation itself.

And doesn’t that sound good?

PRAY AS YOU GO

Below you will find the prayer of St. Francis which powerfully sums up everything that we have been talking about for the last two days. Pray it constantly over the course of this weekend as a way of allowing your life to become a channel or conduit for God’s Kingdom.

Make me a channel of your peace:
Where there is hatred, let me bring you love;
Where there is injury, your healing pow'r,
And where there's doubt, true faith in you.

Make me a channel of your peace:
Where there's despair in life let me bring hope;
Where there is darkness, - only light,
And where there's sadness, ever joy.

O Spirit, grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love with all my soul - .

Make me a channel of your peace.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
In giving to all that we receive,
And in dying that we're born to eternal life.