DAY 256

CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN…WE HOPE

Proverbs 13 & 14 and 2 Corinthians 5

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”13:12.

As we start to read this fifth chapter of 2^nd Corinthians it seems as if we are reading about earth and heaven: For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. It seems that way until we press on:  ² For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, and the phrase “put on” catches me off guard. But then the text shifts more to our bodies, listen as we read: ³if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked.

The text is talking about how we are clothed with earthly bodies, bodies that are “tents,” i.e. that which won’t last. Yet we don’t want to take them off as much as we want to “put on” something much more permanent: ⁴For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened--not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 

“So that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life”…wow, what we view as death is not death at all, it is life.

How is this possible? ⁵He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

If I think of the proverb about “hope deferred” I am led to point out that waiting and hoping on our time in eternity is not “deferring” our hope. Our hope is in this future state. To “defer” is to postpone. Our eternity is not postponed, it is “right here—in us, we know that it is our destiny and our destiny is not postponed…it awaits us.

 ⁶So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, ⁷for we walk by faith, not by sight. ⁸Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. ⁹So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. 

***By the way, that text, “what is mortal may be swallowed up by life,” that text is getting read at my funeral, just so everyone there is clear about my new eternal life.