But A Shadow

It's interesting to look around at a world that is in vivid, living, breathing, pulsing color, and see a place that you firmly believe is only a shadow of the world that is to come (Col. 2:17). A faded, cursed version of heaven, which will be everything we love here on steroids. There will be no death in heaven. No drought-induced dead boughs like the ones on the bottom of the evergreens in my backyard. The scene above would, for example, be unspoiled by the dead tree trunk that lops in it half in the photo I took last weekend at Frozen Head State Park here in Tennessee. I won't be the mass of creaky, nearly 49-year-old limbs that I was as I scaled the rocks to the left of the scene, either.

 I love Easter because it occurs in spring, the time of abounding newness after the dead doldrums of winter. What happened on the first Easter is so pivotal to the life and vitality of heaven. I wouldn't be looking forward to the country that will not fade if not for the resurrection of Christ. If God had not brought Christ forth from the tomb with the same power that pulses through my spirit as I type these words, I would have no hope of that glorious tomorrow when I will run through fields of flowers, not a loose petal among them. I would not have the light of my grandfather's smile to look forward to. I would not have the undying joy of seeing Jesus face-to-face, the very author and finisher of my faith (Hebrews 12:2). I would have absolutely nothing. Everything in this life is fading. Everything in the life to come is coming into clearer focus for me as the years roll onward, picking up speed, it seems, like a boulder forcefully pushed  downhill.

Dead religion takes the joy and beauty out of everything, even the message of the resurrection, and shrouds us all in duty and hollow, self-serving sacrifice.  Don't let it. The resurrection was an act of love. It was the detailed plan of a gracious heavenly Father who doesn't forget a single one of us. I was browsing a home decor store yesterday. My mood was lifted because there were so many pretty things. Why did that occur? Because we were made for beauty and the joy associated with it. Enjoy it here on earth, praise God for it, but remember, it's all a shadow of what is to come.