Bad News about Heaven

If you're just wanting Jesus to heal you, then I have some bad news about heaven.... 

See, we say it all the time, especially when we are watching someone we love struggling in their human flesh. We look forward to the day when Jesus just takes them home because they will finally be healed of all of this. Because they will finally get their body back. 

We look at our loved ones in wheelchairs, and we imagine them running. We look at the amputee who lost their legs in battle, and we see them, like the man in the Temple, stretching out their limbs again. We look at the blind and know that they will see us. We are confident that when we all get to heaven (what a day of rejoicing that will be), we will all be full and whole and well and the things that ravaged our bodies down here will be no more. 

But...maybe not? 

Jesus Himself said that if your hand causes you to sin, you should cut it off because it's better to have only one hand than to be thrown whole into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. Because it's better to only have one eye than to have both and be bound to hell by the one. 

And it was Jesus who was crucified, with nails piercing His hands and His feet, who came back from the grave and showed those physical scars to Thomas. Did not just show them to the disciple, but let the unsure young man put his fingers through the holes. 

So tell me again how we believe that God is going to restore our bodies to perfectly and beautifully functional and whole when Jesus Himself says the hand that would throw us into hell is better off amputated and He showed His own physical, earthly scars to a disciple after His own resurrection? 

Yesterday, we asked what it is that we're believing God for and saw that from very early on when Jesus was walking this earth, it seems like a lot of folk were believing Him for their healing. 

What if...Jesus doesn't heal you? 

Not because He can't. We know that He can. Not because He doesn't want to. We know that He wants to. But what if...that's just not the way? 

What if all the things that you've lost in this body are not coming back to you in the next life? 

On the surface, this seems like a damning question. It's too hard. It's...unfathomable. God won't heal me? God won't make me whole? My child who has been bound in a wheelchair, my husband who lost his legs in combat, my wife who suffered a traumatic brain injury, my friend who went blind...they're going to be crippled...for eternity? 

What kind of God is that? 

But that's exactly the point. That's exactly the question. If you aren't believing God for your healing, is there something worth believing Him for? 

I think it's good to engage our sanctified imagination this way. I think it's good to think about the things we might be missing because the answers we've already settled on are too comfortable for us, too close. One of the best ways we fall more in love with God is by thinking about the things we don't normally think about, by thinking about more than we've settled for in our too-familiar faith. 

What other things can you dream of with your eyes wide open?