i love books

you all know i love to read so sometimes i will bore you with comments about certain books i have enjoyed. today is one of those days...

i recently read THE SLUMBER OF CHRISTIANITY by ted dekker. here is a question for you to think about: if you had the option of going to heaven right now, and i mean RIGHT NOW, no time to go brush your teeth or anything - would you go? or would you say, "well, God, i really want the chance to get married and have kids and get drafted to the nhl" or whatever it is that you dream about, "so i'll come in a few (like fifty?) years after i've done those things."

my initial response was unfortunately option number two - i don't want to play in the nhl, but you get the picture. it felt kind of poor, but that's the truth, and i suspect it's the truth for most people (at least here in the western world - if you really want to be challenged read THE HEAVENLY MAN by brother yun - but that's a book for another time...). isn't it normal to hold on to our lives so hard? we try so hard to find fulfillment and happiness now, but so often we can't! how frustrating. the truth, dekker proposes, is that it's all a big fat lie - nothing on earth can fullfill us or make us truly happy because it wasn't meant to - that's God's job. In fact, we were created to be with God in eternal joy, not to be here in a sinful world where joy is so elusive. So it's normal to want that joy, but it's just impossible to get it all here and now. i don't know if you can believe that, but i find it to be a very liberating concept. i don't have to be totally fullfilled by my job. it's ok if i have a cool husband and friends and yet i still sometimes feel lonely or sad. in reality, this life is but a shadow of the life to come, or at least that's what i've come to see.

the rest of SLUMBER really opened my eyes to the reality of heaven, and the HOPE that we have, namely our hope in Jesus and eternal life that will be Awesome and all that, not hope in a short life that often sucks here on earth. so i'm starting to feel like maybe someday i will be able to answer that question in a different way and be like elijah or enoch who, when they actually got the chance not to die and just go to heaven, took it.

so i've been thinking a lot about heaven and hope and learning some new things. actually dekker encourages a few steps, such as looking through the whole new testament for every time it mentions the word HOPE, which i've been trying to do. i've also started reading the book HEAVEN by randy alcorn, which is a huge book but very interesting. and currently my favorite song is THERE IS A DAY by phatfish which talks about Jesus coming back and how awesome that will be. so it's catching on, slowly.

last thoughts: if we have hope in Christ only for this life we are the most miserable people in the world. (i corinthians 15:19) true? i think so. read on: but the fact is that Christ has been raised from the dead. He has become the first of a great harvest of those who will be raised to life again (verse 20). that's me! and hopefully you.