Our Longing for Heaven

(April 23, 2012)

In his wonderful book, Reversed Thunder, Eugene Peterson reflects upon heaven, “We never graduate from life and what maintains life.  Heaven is not an advance over the basic, but a deepening of it.  And what is basic, water and fruit, is also abudant.  Our lives flow in a river.  Our lives ripen into fruit.”  Paul wrote something similar to this in his letter to the Phillipians: “I am sure of this, that he who begain a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (1:6).  He writes of the double end of this creation with the “enemies of the cross of Christ” (3:18b) who have thier “minds set on earthly things” coming to destruction (3:19).  The destructive end of the unrepentant is coupled with the glorious completion of the people of God.    Those who find their citizenship in heaven in this present age await the coming of Christ in the future age to transform these lowly boides into glorious bodies.  The people of God yearn for this completion just as the whole creation yearns for it (Rom. 8:22-23).  This longing, as Peterson and Paul passionately argue, is not a longing for an otherworldly reality, but a longing for more creation, more humanity, more life, more love, more of everything that makes us the creative images of God.