NBierma.com > Heaven > Chapter 7 > Excerpt
 Bringing Heaven Down To Earth
Connecting This Life to the Next
by Nathan L.K. Bierma
P&R Publishing
Chapter 7
Thinking Big: Connecting Heavenly Hope to Daily Life
Excerpt
Pages 135-145 in Chapter 7
Thoreau’s last words, I noted at the beginning of this book, were to his friend Parker Pillsbury, in response to the question
of whether he had any vision of the afterlife. “One world at a
time, Parker,” Thoreau replied.
To live in the hope of heaven is to live as though Thoreau were wrong. It is to live in two worlds at once: the world as it
is and the world as it was meant to be—and will be again. It is
to see shades of both creation and new creation in daily life—the present visited by the future. It is to see heaven creeping
into our natural environment and social lives and to want more
of it. It is to live with a constant consciousness of what David
Dark calls “a world both beyond and presently among the world
of appearances.” To live in the hope of heaven is to feel the tug
of the strange tension between what Oscar Cullman called the
already and the not yet—the initial triumph of the first coming
of Christ and the promise of his second one.
To live with this tension on a daily basis... continued |
Excerpt used with permission of P&R Publishing, copyright 2005.
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