I tend to think about death....

I tend to think about death quite a bit. 

Okay maybe that sounds quite morbid, or at least my friends think so. To phrase it better I think about life by proxy of death. Or maybe I should say I think about heaven. A place only reachable through the final arrival of death. For aren't we all in a state of departures.

I guess this is an extension of my short essay on Grief and the Perseverance of Love. We tend to describe Heaven by comparison to things here on Earth. Brokenness vs wholeness, Sadness vs Joy, Temporary vs eternal, Rust vs Pristine. A kingdom that cannot be destroyed. A place that each person has a deep desire for. Yet we are stuck in a state of inbetween. An empire of rust.

Every election year I’ve been alive, I have constantly heard the rhetoric of us vs them. That if one side doesn’t win it means the end of our democracy. And maybe so. I even had the harrowing thought this week that what if it doesn’t matter who wins, our empire is already rusted through. This new Roman empire is reaching its collapse.

Maybe that’s why my thoughts turn to heaven. A kingdom that cannot be conquered or destroyed. One where our king has not only conquered the planet but even death itself.

The book of Hebrews is a pretty coherent book in the New testament, pointing to Jesus’ superiority over everything, but there is one verse that the author just throws in near the end that doesn’t exactly fit in:

“For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come” Hebrews 13:14 (NLT)

Yet it encapsulates the message of Jesus’ superiority. This kingdom is not ours but we belong to one that is superior to this empire of rust.