Homesick

Last nite was ARPC's final sermon on the series for Revelation. When I went home to read my Philip Yancey bk (which I have not touched for a while)...my jaw dropped at how perfectly his chpt tied in with the last 2 chpts of Revelation. Plus Yancey used the Eliot quote which I have put under the title of my blog...so tt made me melt...again.

In all, it was divine timing for me. :) Esp since I was still meditating on Rev.....was so blown away by the beauty of God's Word and His promises. I think I was gasping in service during the bible reading! Think I will really miss hearing teachings on Revelation.

Do read the Rev verses at the end!:)I hope it takes your breath away! How cool is God's Word??? AMEN!!!

Anyway, this was what Yancey had to say...:)

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"Once the Spanish mystic Unamuno, conversing with a peasant, suggested that perhaps there was a God but no heaven. The peasant thought a minute and then replied, 'So what is this God for?'

The Bible stakes God's reputation on his ability to conquer evil and restore heaven and earth to their original perfection. Apart from that future state, God could be judged less-than-powerful, or less-than-loving. So far the prophets' visions of peace and justice have not come true. Swords aren't being melted into plowshares.Death, with ugly new mutations of AIDS and environmental cancers, is still swallowing people up, not being swallowed. Evil, not good, appears to be winning. But the Bible, calls us to see beyond the grim reality of history to the view of all eternity, when God's reign will fill the earth with light and truth.

In any discussion of disappointment with God, heaven is the last word, the most important word of all. Only heaven will finally solve the problem of God's hiddenness. For the first time ever, human beings will be able to look upon God face to face. In the midst of his agony, Job somehow came up with the faith to believe that "in the flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes." That prophecy will come true not just for Job but for all of us...

All the beauty and joy we meet on earth represent 'only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited'(C.S Lewis)....

And faith is, in the end, a kind of homesickness--for a home we have never visited but have never once stopped longing for.

'And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.'
- T.S Eliot-

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away....

(The Glory of the New Jerusalem)
But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almight and the Lamb are its temple. And te city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it, and the Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of te earth bring their glory and honour into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). And they shall bring the glory and the honour of the nations into it. But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of life." - Rev 21:1-4, 22-27