| When we're young, heaven has limited appeal. We've too many dreams such as love, marriage, children, career, and so on. Ageing is God's way of keeping us headed homeward. And what about death? Christians don't get buried, they get planted. Paul writes, '...The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable... it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power' (1 Corinthians 15:42-43 NIV). Calvin Miller writes, 'The world is poor because her treasure is buried in the sky and all her treasure maps are of the earth.' Have you heard the story of the bird named Putsy? When nobody claimed her, the Humane Society gave her to Sue. They became fast friends. One day the little bird did something incredible; it perched on her shoulder and whispered, 'Fifteen hundred South Oneida Street, Green Bay, Wisconsin.' Sue was dumbfounded. She discovered that the address actually existed, went there and found a man named John Stoobants. 'Do you have a parakeet?' she asked. 'I used to. I miss her terribly,' he replied. When he saw Putsy he was thrilled. 'You know,' he said, 'she even knows her phone number.' This story isn't as crazy as you might think. You see, we all have an eternal address within us. God has '...set eternity in the hearts of men...' (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV). Deep down, we know we're not home yet, so we must be careful not to live like we are. Would you set up house in a hotel? The greatest calamity is not to feel far from home when you are, but to feel right at home when you're not. And we're not home yet, because 'our homeland is in heaven' (Philippians 3:20 TLB). |
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