real

Religious faith is always personal, but it’s never private. It always has social consequences, or it isn’t real.

~Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

I've been thinking recently about the practical application of my faith because without some sort of consequence in my everyday life, it's really meaningless. Grant, my best friend on planet earth, was in High Point for my brother's graduation from high school, and he came to Raleigh on Tuesday night to spend the night. I got to see a lot of him. He and I always talk about topics almost as broad as you can imagine, but in particular this time there was discussion about redeeming culture, the death of folk-Christianity in American culture, and living in community. I've also been listening to Tim Keller sermons recently, and he is forever talking about the redemption of culture and the physical earth from the hold of sin and death.

One big thing that I forget sometimes is that someday there will be a new Jerusalem, and it will be the kingdom of God on the earth. Our bodies will be resurrected; we will live as we were designed to at the beginning. Our lives now are not disconnected from that coming kingdom. We are building the kingdom right now. I believe that whatever work we do here in our lifetime will be present in the new Jerusalem. Also, consider Jesus' resurrected body. The scars from his first life were still on his body. We are going to have the proof of our faithfulness on our bodies when we are resurrected.

Keller said something amazing in a sermon of his that I was listening to the other day. He is talking about 1 Corinthians 15 and notes verses 54 and 55 that say, "Death has been swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" What happens when we swallow something? We digest it and become bigger. So if death is swallowed by victory, it means that death becomes part of victory, making it bigger and stronger. Receiving back our loved ones from the grave in the new Jerusalem will be so much sweeter because we had lost them once. Victory will become more meaningful, more overwhelming, because we have known loss. Life will be more valuable because we have know death. This blows my mind.

Be complete.