Why Doesn't God Do Something?預覽

Our heavenly hope

Sam: Lyn, this world is a seriously unjust place!

Lyn: Yes, it is.

Sam: Doesn’t that worry you? Good people often suffer while the bad guys get away with it.

Lyn: Yes, that is often the case. But you haven’t considered the whole story.

Sam: What do you mean?

Lyn: Well, if this life is all there is, you are right. The world is an unjust and unfair place. But this life is also only one chapter of a very long saga. There are more chapters yet to come in which everything will be put right and justice will be done.

Sam: What on earth are you talking about? 

Lyn: Not earth--heaven.

Sam: Heaven! Pie in the sky when you die! Who believes in heaven these days? I don’t. And I certainly don’t believe in hell. 

Lyn: So you really don’t want justice to be done after all?

Sam: I didn’t say that!

Lyn: Well, actually, you did. If you do believe in justice, this life cannot be all there is. There has to be something more, some further time and place where all wrongs are righted and all sorrows wiped away. Heaven gives us hope. There is no more sorrow there—no tears, no pain (Revelation 21:4). 

Heavenly hope is not just nice—it is necessary.

Sam: That’s an original idea, Lyn. 

Lyn: Well, not really, Sam. It’s been around for a while—like a few thousand years! 

Sam: All right, all right. But it’s original to me.

Lyn: Hm, I guess it would be to a lot of people… Sam, think about the terrible, horrific suffering many people endure. It’s truly awful. I don’t want to minimize or trivialize that one bit. But in a passage written in a time of vicious persecution, the Bible describes our present-day suffering as ‘light and momentary’ in contrast to the incomparable glory and joy that God has in store for us. One day we will look back on even our worst troubles and it will be just like recalling a scratched knee from a fall when we were children. We howled then but it means nothing now.

Sam: All right. I get that. It’s a pretty simple concept. 

Lyn: Sam, it’s both simple and profound. If God is real, heaven is real. But if heaven is not real, there is no hope. And no one can live without hope. As I said before, heaven is not just nice, it’s necessary.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18; Revelation 21;1-27

What next? Which verse or verses really stand out to you from these passages? Why?