Naked People in Heaven

Instant bad mood.  I search around for my screaming phone on the floor under my bed.  The damn alarm clock continues to scream at the top of its lungs.  Slowly gaining control of my sleeping body, I step out of bed, pick up my phone and turn off the alarm.  The pain of waking up.  In heaven, I will roll over and enjoy the waking up process just as much as snuggling into bed and drifting off to sleep.  (That is if we sleep in heaven.)

My world runs about me in fast forward.  Honking impatiently at the slow moving car, spending what we don’t have for the newest item that hits the shelves, driving around our children to some place other than home.  Why do I join the insanity of the crowd?  I do believe in busying oneself with hard work, but that is not what is happening here.  We are all consumed with what does not matter.

Now.  What we want is now.  The admiring stares of those we don’t know.  Now.  The praise of what drives us around.  Now.  Winners of the race.  Packed pantries to overflowing.  Fashonable jewelry on our bodies and extra in the closet.  Fancy modern restaurants.  Everything that our neighbors have.  Our neighbors that we want to be like, not the ones outside of our neighborhood.

But all we think about is now and we laugh at anyone that suggests otherwise.

Ted Turner is famous for a lot of things, one of them is stating what is on his mind.  Hey, I can respect that.  He likes to chose his words so that other people listen.  He doesn’t just fit into the crowd.  I respect that also.  But I wish that someone would tell him, and a whole lot of the rest of the world, that they are on the wrong train.  When Turner quoted, “I’d rather go to hell.  Heaven has got to be boring.”  I wish someone would have asked him, “What do you want most in life?”….”It will be in heaven.”

Heaven is better than being a billionaire.  There is money to spare, Hey, let’s pave these streets with gold.  Heaven is better than pornography!  THERE WILL BE PERFECT BODIES WALKING AROUND NAKED!  And it will be a good thing!  No one will be embarrassed!  (There will be no sin in heaven.  Pornography is a destructive, cruel sin.  The point is, naked bodies will be good….and everywhere.)  Heaven is better than Hawaii.  All the food will be paid in full!  Heaven is better than Christmas!  That baby Jesus, he will be with us!  It doesn’t sound boring to me!

And what will not be in heaven?  Babies without mommies.  Wheelchairs won’t be needed in heaven, or medicine, or hospitals.  There will not be divorce, no one’s heart will be broken.  What have you been through?  What hurts?  What tugs at your heart and makes you cry out, “That is not right!”  God will end it.  He will make all the wrongs undone and he will wipe away that tear.

“Jesus’ miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we want is coming.”  Tim Keller.

So, look at this world.  Read the Bible.  Take a look at what is good in this world.  LORD, FIX MY PRIORITIES!  SET MY MIND ON THINGS ETERNAL!  Get ready.  It is going to be the best party of all of eternity.  Don’t throw away your invitation.

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I Love My Strength

I call to the one that is worthy of praise, “I am tangled in death.  I need a deliverer.”  

My sweet intimacy when he is all I need, the one I seek in my troubled time. It can not be replaced. I can not be talked out of my stronghold. Love can not be debated.  

I raise my voice to the one who knows me most. He knows the hurt of my silent tears, the joy of my singing heart, my numbered days on this earth, and he knows more. He knows what I am meant to be. In this world, with no sin, how he intended me to be.  How I will be when I meet him face to face and forever sing his praise. 

He hears my voice. He parts the heavens and comes down, riding on the wings of the wind, with lightning in his hands. He reached down from on high for me. Because he delights in me. I love you LORD, my strength. 

The Worst Sin Ever Invented

We are saved by faith alone, it is none of me and all of him, so that no man can boast. But faith without works is dead. 

An obese man has a heart attack. He passes out and lays on the pavement unconscience. Quickly, he is rushed away by the ambulance. The paramedics revive him, return him to stability, and save his life. It was them that saved his life and not himself. All them. None of him. But if he thanks them and stops at McDonalds on the way home, walks in the door and heats up a pizza, and downs a whole package of Oreos while waiting on the pizza, he is as good as dead. He can not thank them and expect to be saved over and over. He must change. Faith without works is dead. 

This is my imperfect analogy, but I believe it applies to so very many today in my culture. I live fat on the hog with 911 programmed into my phone, but Christ calls us to CHANGE!  We post our articles on Facebook slamming sinners that are different than us, gossip about our neighbors and even our friends to shine our halos, quote our “I would never”s, and live our self righteous lives turning people away from Jesus faster than we can argue our point. 

“It would be dangerous to think of oneself as a person of high ideals…it might lead you to become a prick and think you were rather a special person who deserved to be congratulated on his idealism.”  CS Lewis

And here is my point, the prostitute is not claiming how good she is and pointing out Bible verses to all the druggies around her. The alcoholic, the homosexual, the drug dealer is not judging and condemning. Are they sinning in their lifestyle?  Yes!  The Bible says so, not me. HOWEVER, they are not turning people away from Jesus!

And THAT is why Jesus condemned the Pharisees and hung out with the outcast sinners!  Now, wooa Caroline!  Should we all sin to point others to Jesus?  Nope!  As stated earlier, faith without works (change) is dead, “Go and sin no more.”  

But there is a HUGE difference here!  A matter of LIFE and DEATH!  We are NEVER COMMANDED TO BE SELF RIGHTEOUS!  We are never commanded to point others to ourselves and how good we are, we are to point others to JESUS!

I also was a sinner, Jesus saved me!  I also was lost, Jesus found me!  We are to forgive because we were forgiven more, we are to love because we were first loved, we are to SHINE THE LIGHT OF JESUS, NOT THE LIGHT OF SELF!  The difference is a matter of eternal life and death. 

A Short Something

“I wish it was possible to say something more agreeable, but I must say what I think true.”  CS Lewis

I am a writer, a thinker, a lover. Some quotes make my heart smile. I hear the questions, the objections, and the hurling insults, but there is nothing I wish to add or take away. I read this and I sigh. I read this and I know. I know it is me sometimes. I want to be in agreement. I want to laugh and love and play. But I want truth more. And I am not afraid to disagree. 

Is Truth True?

“You are so close minded that I am not going to talk to you.”  I recently read this comment in response to an article posted on someone’s Facebook page. It caused me to laugh and it caused me to be sad. The humor is obvious. Why the sadness?  Because this comment is a reality of the culture that I live in. The thought process of pop culture and the majority around me goes something like this:

1.  You are wrong for judging me. 

2.  There is no truth, no one way. 

3.  You can not say that because of freedom of speech. 

4.  We need to keep religion/God out of politics, schools, and any public settings. 

Each and every one of these statements is held as fact and yet each of them contradicts itself. 

Every single person believes in a right and wrong. No matter how free a thinker, there is a moral code that each person lives by. No matter how much a person protests to let each person decide their own right and wrong, that very protester does not believe their own words. Each and every person can state an act that they believe is wrong. They believe is always wrong, always and for everybody.

“Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle or where a man felt proud of double crossing all the people that had been kindest to him.”  C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The point being we all have our limits of what we believe acceptable or not. 

Once we establish right and wrong, one question remains:  where do we get right and wrong?  

There is a moral code that drives us. There is a law of nature. A human code of right and wrong. Where?  What?  Who?  How do we have this inside us?  And what should we use as the basis for making our decisions?  What is the universal code that we believe all the world should follow?  When we meet with a stranger, when leaders of countries conveign together, when we raise our children, what is that universal law?

You are not Promised

Quiet, a pause in the deserted city.  The tactical team moves in.  Camo, gear, guns, training, this is the moment.  Footsteps are the only sound, turning, checking, on a mission.  Without even happening, it just is.  A man down.

Thousands, millions, billions of cars line the earth.  Driving the rough terrain, jammed in traffic, moving moving.  A daily occurrence that causes no thought.  Driving to work, carpooling to middle school, departing on date night, late to a meeting, speeding to the hospital, just a Sunday drive with nothing else to do.  Of course you did not know.  You never would have left the house.  And then it is all over.  Life is over.

A bustling Tuesday morning.  Coffee is brewing, a quick granola bar for breakfast, make a school lunch, leave the beds unmade.  The morning is rushed.  Grab a diaper bag and grab the baby.  And then that life is over.  A breathless baby, gone in the night, leaving desperation, panic, anger, and a life unlived.

Everyone always thinks it will be easy to go in old age.  Life is lived and the time has surly come.  They had been together through four babies, seven houses, three wars, forgiveness, choosing each other time and time again, and memories of 72 years.  She didn’t expect for him to go.  They had been together this long, surly it would never end.

Billions have come and gone and somehow we still believe that it will never be me.

Doubted Truth

“Allow me to put on my glasses,” he said when he heard a sound. Slipping on his glasses, he looked up and was eaten by the lion he could not before see. 

Just because we ignore something, does not mean it is not there. Simply because we refuse to know the truth, it does not eliminate the fiery pit of Hell and a consequence for the sins of the earth. 

Turn your ears. Give your heart. Truth is truth, believed or not.