King's Cross

I just finished reading King’s Cross by Tim Keller.  I loved it.  It was so inspiring, I wanted to share these last paragraphs of the book with you.

In Matthew 11:5, Jesus says, “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.”  And to the extent that that future is real to you, it will change everything about how you live in the present.  For example, why is it so hard to face suffering?  Why is it so hard to face disability and disease?  Why is it so hard to do the right thing if you know it’s going to cost you money, reputation, maybe even your life?  Why is it so hard to face your own death or the death of loved ones?  It’s so hard because we think this broken world is the only world we’re ever going to have.  It’s easy to feel as if this money is the only wealth we’ll ever have, as if this body is the only body we’ll ever have.  But if Jesus is risen, then your future is so much more beautiful, and so much more certain, than that.

Every Easter I think about Joni Eareckson Tada.  She was in an accident when she was seventeen, and ever since has been a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down.  While she was still trying to come to terms with this horrible accident, she would go to church in her wheelchair.

The problem with being in a wheelchair, she found, was that at a certain point in her church’s liturgy every Sunday, the priest called everyone to kneel ~ which drove home to her the fact that she was stuck in a wheelchair.  Once she was at a convention in which the speaker urged people to get down on their knees and pray.  Everyone did except Joni.  “With everyone kneeling, I certainly stood out.  And I couldn’t stop the tears.”  But it wasn’t because of self-pity.  She was crying because the sight of hundreds of people on their knees before God was so beautiful – “a picture of heaven.”  And then she continued weeping at another thought:

Sitting there, I was reminded that in heaven I will be free to jump up, dance, kick, and do aerobics.  And…sometime before the guests are called to the banquet table at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, the first thing I plan to do on resurrected legs is to drop on grateful, glorified knees.  I will quietly kneel at the feet of Jesus.

Then, she adds:  “I, with shriveled, bent fingers, atrophied muscles, gnarled knees, and no feeling from the shoulders down, will one day have a new body, light, bright, and clothed in righteousness ~ powerful and dazzling.  Can you imagine the hope that the resurrection gives someone who is spinal cord-injured like me?”  Only in the gospel of Jesus Christ do people find such enormous hope to live.  Only the resurrection promises us not just new minds and hearts, but also new bodies.  They are going to be more indissoluble, more perfect, more beautiful.  They will be able to be and do and bear the burden of what bodies are supposed to do in a way in which our present bodies cannot.

If you can’t dance and you long to dance, in the resurrection you’ll dance perfectly.  If you’re lonely, in the resurrection you will have perfect love.  If you’re empty, in the resurrection you will be fully satisfied.  Ordinary life is what’s going to be redeemed.  There is nothing better than ordinary life, except that it’s always going away and always falling apart.  Ordinary life is food and work and chairs by the fire and hugs and dancing and mountains ~ this world.  God loves it so much that he gave His only Son so we ~ and the rest of this ordinary world ~ could be redeemed and made perfect.  And that’s what is in store for us.

And if you know that this is not the only world, the only body, the only life you are ever going to have ~ that you will someday have a perfect life, a real, concrete life ~ who cares what people do to you?  You’re free from ultimate anxieties in this life, so you can be brave and take risks.  You can face the worst thing, even in a wheel chair, with joy, with hope.  The resurrection means we can look forward with hope to the day our suffering will be gone.   But it even means that we can look forward with hope to the day our suffering will be glorious.  When Jesus shows the disciples His hands and feet, He is showing them His scars.  The last time the disciples saw Jesus, they thought they were on a presidential campaign.  They thought that their candidate was going to win and they were going to be in the cabinet, and when they saw the nails going into the hands and the feet and the spear going into the side, they believed those wounds had destroyed their lives.  And now Jesus is showing them that in His resurrected body His scars are still there.

Why is this important?  Because now that they understand the scars, the sight and memory of them will increase the glory and joy of the rest of their lives.  Seeing Jesus Christ with His scars reminds them of what He did for them ~ that the scars they thought had ruined their lives actually saved their lives.  Remembering those scars will help many of them endure their own crucifixions.

On the Day of the Lord ~ the day that God makes everything right, the day that everything sad comes untrue ~ on that day the same thing will happen to your own hurts and sadness.  You will find that the worst things that have ever happened to you will in the end only enhance your eternal delight.  On that day, all of it will be turned inside out and you will know joy beyond the walls of the world.  The joy of your glory will be that much greater for every scar you bear.

So live in the light of the resurrection and renewal of this world, and of yourself, in a glorious, never-ending, joyful dance of grace.