THE REAL THING

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Imagine, for a moment, the worst thing that could possibly happen to you. Maybe it’s that you might lose your job tomorrow, that you might not be able to pay your mortgage next month, that you car might break down? Or maybe you’re thinking that your child or grandchild will die or your spouse will be diagnosed with a terminal illness? Perhaps it’s that a tornado would level the town or the house might burn down or the crops might be irreparably damaged by a hailstorm. Maybe it’s that a financial meltdown will wipe out your retirement savings.

There’s no end to the possible disasters that we can imagine in life. But I wonder how many of you imagined what really is the worst thing that could possibly happen—the worst thing is that you might lose heaven.

How great is your personal risk of losing heaven? How sure are you that that’s where you’re going? Part of the problem seems to be that most of us have only a vague understanding as to how we get there. Recent polls by the Barna Group and others indicate that almost all of us believe in heaven—and almost none of us have a solid biblical understanding of what heaven is and how we get there. Our ideas of heaven are widely varied and have been shaped mostly by popular books, movies and television.

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Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

At 5:30 on the morning of April 18, a 31 year old homeless man collapsed on a Queens, New York, sidewalk after he was stabbed several times by a mugger when he tried to stop another man who was attempting to mug a woman on the street. A surveillance camera showed more than twenty passersby failing either to provide help or call the police for more than an hour as the man lay there bleeding. It wasn’t that they didn’t notice him—the video showed one man roll him over and then walk away, while another man used his cell phone to take a picture. By the time a 911 call directed firefighters to the scene, the man was already dead. The woman for whom he had risked, and ultimately sacrificed, his life, fled the scene before he even collapsed.

We all know the story of the Good Samaritan—it’s a story that even those who aren’t Christian are familiar with. And we all understand that Jesus used it to answer the question of who is our neighbor. But I think we sometimes overlook how this story began. The lawyer’s question to Jesus was: “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25).

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Isn’t this the question that we all ask? How can we be sure that we will spend eternity in heaven?

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Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

On Friday, I drove to Des Moines and traffic was heavy. It seemed that almost every vehicle on the interstate was pulling a motor home or camper or trailer or boat. The people I talked to who were going away for the long weekend were looking forward to it with anticipation. Two of my grandchildren arrived yesterday to spend a few days and they were almost overcome with excitement. And, like all those people on the road, they didn’t travel light. The back of their van was filled with all the things they need for just a few days—they even brought their bikes.

All this is in marked contrast to our gospel, where Jesus sends out the seventy-two. Were they excited about the prospect of going? The text doesn’t specifically say, but it’s hard to imagine anyone being too excited about being sent out “as lambs in the midst of wolves” (Luke 10:3).  That sounds dangerous and scary to me.

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Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

On Tuesday, January 12, a massive earthquake destroyed much of the small country of Haiti. It is estimated that, as a result, 230,000 people died, an additional 300,000 were injured, and more than a million people were left homeless.

An April offshore oil rig explosion resulted in the death of eleven oil rig workers and oil continues to spew into the Gulf of Mexico as a result, causing the destruction of sea life, beaches and jobs.

Also in April, a devastating mine explosion in West Virginia left 29 men dead, leaving wives without husbands and children without fathers.

Floods, tornadoes, mudslides have killed dozens of people and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses around the world in the last two months. Just this past week, at least 18 people died in flash floods in Arkansas.

In addition to these catastrophic disasters, there are the problems of daily life that we never read about in the newspaper or hear on the evening news. Children are born into the world blind, deformed, or mentally afflicted. Men and women who are living good and productive lives are diagnosed with hopeless diseases that can only end in death—often after a prolonged period of pain and suffering. People are shot. People die in car crashes. People are hit by cars or buses as they walk to work.

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Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Dalai Lama was in this country last week. The media has been making much of this event, both locally and nationally, providing extensive coverage of his trip and praising his knowledge and understanding of the world we live in. The Dalai Lama says that he believes in man’s basic goodness, that man is not by nature violent or evil, but rather that our basic desire is to cooperate with one another. Speaking to a group of graduating college students in Iowa last week, he said, “So therefore I describes human nature as more gentleness.” He went on to say that the people who are violent are in the minority in our world.

Religion, he says, is a good thing, although there is no religion that is right for everyone.

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