Over the years of my life, I’ve seen something happen enough times to be able to recognize something of a pattern that ends up really changing things for me, super-charging my heart and giving me new passion and vision. It’s when some deep truth–ubiquitous in the Scripture and supremely applicable to life and to the world–finally lands deep in my heart and mind with a revolutionary impact that doesn’t fade. These deep truths include things like the love of God, theosis, the Kingdom of God, justice, the word ‘abide’, sacraments, vocation, true self, and others. While the language of such things might have been familiar, it was finally the clear and simple understanding of them that brought new vigor, strength, passion and joy.
In each of these cases, after long processes of pondering, studying, talking, wrestling, and questioning, finally some clarity came with the force of revelation. And every time it unlocked a huge swath of Scriptures in brand new ways that made more of the Bible make sense. And then these insights would usually find their way into a sermon and then perhaps become the basis of a whole retreat!
In the mid-2000s this clarity happened to me again with the truths of resurrection, heaven and rewards. When clarity about these these truths land in our hearts and minds, our lives will be altered. Our lives will change; our days will be transformed, each moment potentially taking on an awesome, glorious, joy-filled gravitas. When these truths land, they will do what God’s truth always does when it lands—it will revolutionize us. When we don’t have a clear vision of what comes next, we miss out on an immense invitation of life now. We’ll be afflicted by misplaced priorities, small vision, even fear, and our capacity for courage becomes stunted.
To guard us from those things and to spark this “Resurrection Revolution” in our lives, we’re offering a brand new retreat at Corhaven on June 10 called “All Things New: Where It’s All Going”. We’ll explore what the Bible says about resurrection bodies, New Creation, the Kingdom of God, heaven, and will make sense of all that language in Jesus and the New Testament about rewards. “Lunch by Tara” and the Eucharist will give us two distinct foretastes of the Kingdom to come!
Jesus charges us in Matthew 6.20: “Lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven.” Let’s figure exactly what that means so we can do it, shall we? Let’s become more heavenly minded so we can do a heckuva lot of earthly good, with joy.