August 22 Anticipation!!!

John 14:2 In my Father's house are many mansions; if not, I would have told you. I am going away to prepare a place for you.

I love that we are part of a family, not just our biological family, but our spiritual family. One of my brothers, spiritual ones, gave me a great book: The God Who Smokes by Timothy Stone, a former missionary kid. My friend Don, knowing my passion about writing told me to go straight to chapters 9 and 10, so I did and they spoke straight to me as a writer. But then, I just continued to chapter 11 instead of going back to the beginning and I am so glad I did.

You have probably picked up the idea that I have been thinking about the life our life in Christ now and the one to come of late and there was this great paragraph in chapter 11 that I just had to share with you:

You are an eternal being, and your home is an eternal and infinite and exquisitely beautiful place where everything and everyone is complete and whole and in harmony. It is musical and magical, and it is where we all were meant to be. It is where the dance begins and never ends. It is where you fly because all the weights and the waits have been removed. All the nos and the can'ts and the shouldn'ts, all the stops and flops and failures, all the bads and wrongs and wickeds and brokens, and all those long, needling, crushing, killing regrets are erased.

Wow, what a thought!! Makes me wonder why we cling so to this world. Certainly we want to enter that place without regrets, having done all we could to redeem this world for Christ, to use our giftedness for His glory, but oh, what a day it will be when we are shed of this world!!!!

Today our semester begins, and between those on campus and those online perhaps a 1000 BBC, grad and seminary students are filled with anticipation, of learning, building relationships and at the end receiving a "well-done" handshake and a diploma.  So we step into this day filled with anticipation of the glorious day at the end of our "earthly semester," when graduation brings us into heaven. May we bring glory to God as well all encourage one another as we head toward that end.