In my John Lit class we were given an assignment to meditate on Ezekiel 47, which describes a river flowing out from the temple, deepening as it goes and bringing life to barren places - even the Dead Sea. This is really crazy, especially if you know anything about the Dead Sea (it's so intensely salty that nothing grows or lives there). Yet this mysterious river is so powerful that it turns the salt water fresh and life flourishes on its banks.
The crazy thing is that after Jesus' death and resurrection, believers are called His temple. I am His temple, and He dwells inside of ME. Somehow, his glory resides in ME. Somehow, He is pouring a river of life out of ME, like in Ezekiel 47. It gets deeper and wider and makes dead places alive. Somehow, I am the temple and Jesus is the sacrifice. All of those laws in the Old Testament having to do with God's presence in the temple and sacrificing animals to atone for sins were pointing to this. We have intimate, personal communion with God. Not perfect, yet, of course... Not yet an intense, passionate, joyous, never-ending, all-is-at-rest, fulfilling and sweet-sounding song that is whispered gently and sung at the top of angelic lungs... maybe not always that kind of communion. But God has given us our own markers to help us look forward to the day when those things will all be true. Always.
The church, for instance. As incomplete and corrupted with sin as it is, the church paints a faint picture of the community - no, the family - that we will be a part of in Heaven (our true home). It will be a family made up of every single race that exists on this earth - no longer divided by past, language, culture, time, or ocean, but bonded by mutual love for and from its Creator. Do we need another reason to start pouring ourselves into the lives of people who have nothing in common with us but our faith? Marriage is another symbol meant to communicate a truth about the love that Jesus has for His church. Jesus is coming back for His bride (a word used often in the New Testament to describe believers), and she will experience the love of His infinite heart as He shows her the depth of the price He was willing to pay for her. Marriage is a picture of what it means to love another person selflessly as Jesus has done and will continue to do when we are with him in Heaven (home). Even singleness gives us a picture of our undivided purpose to love and worship God that will one day be our greatest desire.
What other clues has He left us to help us look forward? Don't we have a great hope? Hasn't He proven Himself faithful? Or are we still measuring Him with a human measuring stick that leaves a little room for sin and human error?
This is the blessing of living in the already but not yet Kingdom. We get to look back on Jesus and see the truth of who He is, and we get to live as living, walking, breathing, talking temples (bearers of the Holy Spirit) bringing light and life wherever we go, and we get to look forward to the promises of a nothing-close-to-boring eternal future home. No wonder Jesus said that "the one who is least in the Kingdom" is greater than even the greatest of the prophets (i.e. John the Baptist, who still looked forward to His coming). Wow! Yeah, life is rough sometimes... and Jesus understands that better than any of us... but let us rejoice, because we are blessed, and things only go up from here.
If I may quote a proverb or two: There is no time like the present... and there is definitely no place like home.
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