For This World (and the next)

This week we will take a break from the narrative of the church and look at some other topics, giving me time to gather more information and preventing those posts from becoming drab and dry.  Today I give you a segment from N.T. Wright's insightful book on the resurrection and heaven, Surprised by Hope. He writes of how our present actions matter in eternity:

God's recreation of his wonderful world, which began with the resurrection of Jesus and continues mysteriously as God's people live in the risen Christ and in the power of his Spirit, means that what we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted.  It will last all the way into God's new world.  In fact, it will be enhanced there.

I have no idea what precisely this will mean in practice.  I am putting up a  signpost, not offering a photograph of what we will find once we get to where the signpost is pointing.  I don't know what musical instruments we shall have to play Bach in God's new world, though I'm sure Bach's music will be there.... I do not know how the painting an artist paints today in prayer and wisdom will find a place in God's new world.  I don't know how our work for justice for the poor, for remission of global debts, will reappear in that new world.  But I know that God's new world of justice and joy, of hope for the whole earth, was launched when Jesus came out of the tomb on Easter morning, and I know that he calls his followers to live in him and by the power of his Spirit and so to be new-creation people here and now bringing signs and symbols of the kingdom to birth on earth as it is in heaven.   

The resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit mean that we are called to bring real and effective signs of God's renewed creation to birth even in the midst of the present age.  

Though I don't endorse (or know quite enough about) N.T. Wright's other works - some of which are theologically controversial right now - this book provides excellent perspective on living in the "already but not yet" reality that is the kingdom of God.