I recently ran across the phrase in someone’s Instagram feed where they claimed to be “Living my best life,” not an uncommon declaration in today’s American culture. Within a day or two of that, I saw an ad for One A Day vitamins proclaiming, “You only get one body.”
Christians believe differently. We are not living our best life now, and we will get a new body. The Bible teaches us that God will restore his creation with a New Earth and that believers will . Stephen Colbert – a devout Catholic – said on The Late Show earlier in February, “[for Christians], death is not defeat.” For a Christian, death is much more akin to going home, to your best home and your best life, than defeat.
“Sometimes when we look at this world’s breathtaking beauty – standing in a gorgeous place where the trees and flowers and rivers and mountains are wondrous – we feel a twinge of disappointment. Why? Because we know we’re going to leave this behind. In consolation or self-rebuke, we might add, “But part of me sure wishes it was.
What we really want is to live forever in a world with all the beauty and none of the ugliness – a world without sin, death, the Curse, and all the personal and relational problems and disappointments they create . . .
By calling the New Earth Earth, God emphatically tells us it will be earthly, and thus familiar. Otherwise, why call it Earth? . . .
The Greek word translated ‘earth’ is ge, from which we get ‘geology.’ It is used of land, soil, and the world itself. Walter Bauer defines ge as ‘the surface of the earth as the habitation of humanity’ . . .
– Excerpt from Heaven by Randy Alcorn
Photo: Sculpting an insect from Ponderoku with copper wire and handmade paper
ponderoku.com 