Moving Home

It is widely acknowledged that it is highly stressful to move to a new home. 

Several people will be experiencing that stress-filed change in the next few days and weeks.

At the same time, many of us are deeply moved and in grief at the death of loved family members or friends.

St. Paul used the image of moving home as a description of what happens for Christians at death. 'We know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands.' (2 Corinthians 5.1)

Jesus spoke to his disciples of our heavenly home, which he was going to prepare for us, by his own death and resurrection. 

St. Paul goes on to makes it clear that moving to our new heavenly home is going to be much, much better than our present life of struggle and suffering. 'We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing.  For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life. God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit.' (2 Corinthians 5.2-5)

These words of course challenge the widely held view that after death we are merely disembodied spirits, floating around somewhere. What we have to look forward to, after death, is a wonderfully re-bodied existence, in which everything works properly. In our present lives, nothing works quite as well as it should. But, in the new heaven and new earth to which we are travelling, in our journey of faith in Christ, we will enjoy the perfection for which we were originally created. That makes such a difference, as we all face our own death and the death fo those whom we love. This brings us solid hope of lasting pleasures, in place of blighted hopes and painful disappointments. As we fix our eyes on these certainties, we can support one another in the present. Let us do that.

Best wishes,

Richard