Our Ultimate Future and Hope
For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come. (Hebrews 13:14)
We tend to think of life on Earth as the real thing and Heaven as the surreal thing. But it is the opposite. Heaven is the real thing. All that precedes it is but a glimpse of things to come. Earth is a pale version of Heaven, not the other way around.
Whatever great joys you have on Earth, as wonderful as they are, will be better in Heaven. Maybe you will have all the things you hoped for and more. Then again, maybe there will be things that surpass your wildest dreams.
Heaven is the real thing, and Earth is effectively the copy. We are told in Hebrews, “They serve in a system of worship that is only a copy, a shadow of the real one in heaven” (8:5 nlt).
C. S. Lewis wrote, “The hills and valleys of Heaven will be to those you now experience not as a copy is to an original, nor as a substitute is to the genuine article, but as the flower to the root, or the diamond to the coal.”
As my friend Randy Alcorn pointed out, the problem is that “we tend to start with Earth and reason up toward Heaven, when instead we should start with Heaven and reason down toward Earth.”
Heaven is the real deal, the eternal dwelling place. Earth is the copy, the temporary dwelling place. Heaven is the ultimate future and hope for the Christian. I am not suggesting, however, that life is miserable. Life can be wonderful. You can be going through a bad thing today that will be turned into a good thing tomorrow. There will be many wonderful, joyful moments on Earth, too. But the ultimate joy will come when we see the Lord in Heaven. We must not lose sight of that.
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