day no. 15,831: world without end... and amen.

“It is only when one loves life and the earth so much that without them everything seems to be over that one can believe in the resurrection and a new world.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

Resurrected bodies will need somewhere to live. Perfected and glorified bodies will need a perfectly glorified place to play. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein (Ps 24:1). The Christian belief in resurrection is not limited to the value of the soul, but expands to the value of the stuff. The Word did not become flesh in order to teach immaterialism. The Word materialized in order to confirm the value of the material and to redeem all of it back as the second Adam. The first Adam’s sin had profound spiritual and material consequence. The second Adam’s sacrifice has profound spiritual and material consequence.

One danger of being too heavenly minded is that spiritual realities like the resurrection of the body and the new earth become muted and longing for a corporeal eternality replaces one for a world without end. Only those who receive their lives, breath, and everything else as gifts from God aspire to retain them as eternal opportunities of gratitude. The meek inherit the earth because, as mentioned before, they're the only ones who want to be there. The meek are resurrected to eternal life because they are the only ones who want to live that way. The high-minded find the world too dirty and beneath them and could gladly be done with all of it; the low-minded find it too clean and above them and gladly await the day when they're made clean enough to fully enjoy it.