An eternal church service

“An unholy man would not like heaven in the same way he would not like church.” – Cardinal St. John Henry Newman

In trying to imagine myself enjoying an eternal worship service, I think I get glimpses of how it would truly be joyful when I think how there will be no real either-or between our hopes and dreams and our worship of God. We want a beautiful house and a garden. We want a complete freedom from fear of the future and provision for our needs. We want to write the book that has struggled to come out of us. In that heavenly church, all those needs will be met. “In my father’s house are many rooms.” We will meet the fulfillment of every good desire there, in the kindness of God, and he will reveal how it was his plan all along, showing all the “hidden plot elements” of our life story, now finally consummated. God will not only show himself good, but will show the whole world made good. Now that is something for which I think I will never tire of praising him.

New colors

Then the moon will be abashed and the sun ashamed, for the LORD of hosts will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and His glory will be before His elders. – Isaiah 24:23

The sun will be ashamed at the glory of the Lord, so marvelous will it be. Is the sun not that which illumines and colors everything we see? So then will everything on which our eyes fall not be a thousand times more beautiful in the light of God’s glory – will there not be myriad pleasures and discoveries and little marvels everywhere in Zion, each one giving glory to God through its very visibility and vibrancy? Sight itself will be remade, for there will be a new and greater “electromagnetic spectrum” there, which would make ours here seem like black and white – or perhaps just black. I think if we say that we will all be only staring at the Throne for eternity is quite a narrow view of the beauty of the Lord. He makes everything glorious. Oh I long for that day, when my eyes will at last be opened to gasp and stagger and laugh and shout in the streets of Zion, “the perfection of beauty,” where the Beautiful One reigns!

“There remains a rest for the people of God”

“Surely all the men who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put Me to the test these ten times and have not listened to My voice, shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned Me see it. But My servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land which he entered, and his descendants shall take possession of it.” Numbers 14:22-23

O God, at all cost, may we not be of the class of people who see your glory and your signs, and move about in the congregation of saints, yet continue to relentlessly test God and never full believe his voice. May we never be like those who have not followed fully, and so will die in the wilderness, having received but never imbibed the promises of God, and who never enter the remaining, still-future “rest for the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9).