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THIS WEEK: Heaven
Heaven's "Hack"
Wanting to escape the pain of this earth and transition to heaven is a common desire among the suffering and the aged.
It is all very understandable.
Some in nursing homes make it plain: “I’m the only one left. I’ve outlived all of my peers and relatives. It’s time for me to go.”
At some point, patients with terminal diagnoses may finally conclude that it would be better to go.
But there are a host of people whose lives have spanned a few generations and who are witnessing the descension of morality and they are tempted to say it would be good to “graduate” before the
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If "heaven's Hack" was sold on youtube,
who would click?
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total collapse comes. Their “suffering” is one of fatalism. It’s the heartbroken disappointment in the direction of culture and this spinning globe’s determination to be evil.
Still, others with particularly sensitive natures grapple with pain in ways that stronger people don’t have to and, in fact, do not understand. They might even want a premature way out. We think of the song, “Vincent.”
Advanced cultures offer a living-suicide: carnality. Many retirees and the wealthy escape into the carnality of Solomon who adventured there like no other, “Anything my eyes desired, I did not deny myself. I refused my heart no pleasure.” (Ecclesiastes 2:10 BSB)
There is an alternative. Enter into the suffering, the wrongs and the pain of others.
Ironically, shared-suffering in this sense is the closest thing to heaven where there will be no more pain.
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: Taking a discerning and deliberate plunge into the suffering of others gives us a sneak-preview of the face of Christ - the one we long to see face-to-face in heaven.
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction…In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”…Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord…It is the Lord Christ you are serving…“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
James 1:27 ESV, Acts 20:35 ESV, Colossians 2:23,24 NIV, Matthew 25:40 NIV
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