Ensure your life with LIC…
L-Life
I-In
Christ
Zindagi ke saath bhi…
Zindagi ke baad bhi…
Longing For Heaven…
They were longing for a better country - a heavenly one. (Hebrews 11:16)
A Christian art form that flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries featured paintings of common objects of beauty:
- a vase of flowers, a mandolin, a sideboard with fruit.
Tucked somewhere in the paintings would be the two reminders of the passing nature of human existence: a skull and an hourglass.
These paintings were called vanitas art.
This word 'vanitas' comes from the passage in Ecclesiastes:
"Vanity of vanities; all is vanity… One generation passes away, and another generation comes" (Ecclesiastes 1:2-4).
Now the symbols of the skull and the hourglass weren't intended to foster gloom; they were just a reminder that every possession and achievement we have is temporal, therefore not worthy of our heart's devotion.
They were to prepare us for that moment when we meet God, the meaning and value of our lives weighed, and our eternal rewards given.
The Apostle Paul wasn't afraid to speak about death, specifically his own:
"For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21).
The seventeenth-century Bishop Jeremy Taylor wrote, "Since we stay not here, being people but of a day's abode, we must look somewhere else for an abiding city, a place in another country to fix our house in, whose walls and foundations are God, where we must find rest, or else be restless forever."
Not only did Paul long for heaven, but the patriarchs and heroes of the Old Testament did too:
"All these people were still living by faith when they died…
they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth…
they were longing for a better country - a heavenly one" (Hebrews 11:13-16).
What a wonderful prospect!
May we all have the grace to long for heaven with eagerness today & everyday of our lives!
PRAISE GOD
BLESSED BE THE ONE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD
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