Heaven is yours now.

I think the problem with the idea of eternity is that we do not have any direct experience of it, but we encounter enough of its possibility to be unsettling.

As is often the case in Scripture, creation is about a renewed, restored, and redeemed relationship with the Creator.

What we are asked to believe as we ponder the birth of this child is that in his coming, a new creation has dawned.

Each week during this year’s Advent series, we will take a look at a specific implication of Christ’s incarnation. This week, we will discover how God reaffirms the goodness of his creation by making all things new in the incarnation.

God makes all things new. He refashions us from those turned in upon ourselves, turned to idols of our own choice and making, to experience the freedom He gives by pronouncing us His righteous children.

God's city is beautiful because God has constructed it to offer eternal safety to all weary sinners.

The Earth itself, into which the blood of Christ seeped, will be redeemed and renewed, just like our spirits in Holy Baptism, just like our bodies on the day of the resurrection.

When Christians die, heaven does not “get another angel.” We cannot become angels any more than we can become giraffes or ocean waves or stars. We are people and will remain so after this present life. God did not make a mistake when he made us human.

When talking about God’s ultimate destination for us, we’ve grown sloppy in our language, nearsighted in our gaze, and un-Easter in our hope. We act and speak as if dying and going to heaven is what the faith is all about. It is most emphatically not.

The main point Paul has been getting at in Romans is what God has done in the One man Jesus the Messiah—the rightful heir of God’s earthly kingdom—is far, far more than simply putting the human race back where it was before the intrusion of sin.

We long for the Great Thanksgiving that hasn’t happened yet.