What's the POINT?

Driving down the road last Tuesday praying for the 4 year old son of a new friend here who'd had open heart surgery that morning. I had peace. Assurance. The kid was going to make it. I told my firend Lori,

"If that kid dies, then my faith in being able to trust that I can "hear from God" dies with him."

The little boy was in Sunday School 5 days later! 5 days later!!!

But here I am middle of the next week.
I'm off to teach the kids drama club in an hour. Trying to pull myself together.
I started crying last night while i was praying with Cameron for another little child at bedtime. I haven't been able to stop crying for very long. Unless I'm taking a nap. All day today.
I'm a wreck.
It's not even the right time of the month to be this hopeless.
And I've been taking Evening Primrose twice a day.

My newlywed friends' premature baby died this morning.
Born at 5 months. She survived about a week. Born this early she had only a 50% chance of surviving, and then for what kind of a life? A life of special needs,
I kept begging God to be merciful. Trusting he knows best, but whatever he was going to do, if that tiny little girl was going to die, would he just be merciful and end her suffering? He did.

We're still hurting. And will be for quite awhile.
Jim and I will be the only non-family at the cremation in 4 hours.
We were also the only non-family to witness the couple's sacred marriage vows only 5 weeks ago.

I'm reading a great book called VELVET ELVIS by a young pastor named Rob Bell.
Where I am in the middle of this book is good for me today.
Chapter six "NEW" is Helping answer my questions of

"WHAT'S THE POINT? If heaven is where he makes all things new and we live the way it's supposed to be why don't we all just drink the spiked kool-aid today?"

My mantra of late has been "Hang on till heaven." No one's been able to really give me an answer. Oh, that's just Kimberly being dramatic.

Here's a good section from the book about being REMADE:

"I am not who I was.
I am a new creation.
I am "in Christ".
When God looks at me, God sees Christ, because I'm "in" him.
God's view of me is Christ.
And Christ is perfect.
This is why Paul goes on to say, "therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved..."
Did you catch that word in the middle?
Holy.
Not "going to be holy someday". Not "wouldn't it be nice if you were holy, but instead you're a mess". But "holy".
Holy means pure, without blemish, unstained.
In these passages we're being told who we are, now.
The issue then isn't my beating myself up over all the things I am not doing or the things I keep doing poorly; the issue is my learning who this person is who God keeps insisting I already am.
There is this person who we already are in God's eyes. And we are learning to live like it is true.
This is an issue of identity. It is letting what God says about us shape what we believe about ourselves. This is why shame has no place whatsoever in the Christian experience. It is simply against all that Jesus is for. As the writer to the Romans put it, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."
None.
No shame.
No list of what is being held against us.
No record of wrongs.
Bringing it up is pointless.
Beating myself up is pointless.
Beating others up about who and what they are not is going the wrong direction. It is working against the purposes of God. God is not interested in shaming people; God wants people to see who they really are.
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okay i got carried away on that point. It's good!
But the best POINTS to speak to my WHAT's THE POINT question is the next section:

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We can bring heaven to earth; we can bring hell to earth.
For Jesus, heaven and hell were present realities. Ways of living we can enter into here and now. He talked very little of the life beyond this one because he understood that the life beyond this one is a continuation of the kinds of choices we make here and now.
For Jesus, the question wasn't, how do I get into heaven" but how do I bring heaven here?
The question wasn't, how do I get in there? But how do I get there, here?
Whedn people use the word hell, what do they mean? they mean a place, an event, a situation absent of how God desires things to be. Famine, debt, oppression, loneliness, despair, death, slaughter --they are all hell on earth.

Jesus' desire for his followers is that they live in such a way that they bring heaven to earth.

True spirituality then is not about escaping this world to some other place where we will be forever. A Christian is not someone who expects to spend forever in heaven there. A Christian is someone who anticipates spending forever here, in a new heaven that comes to earth.

The goal isn't escaping this world but making this word the kind of place God can come to. And God is remaking us into the kind of people who can do this kind of work.

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ah. gotta go see if I can bring a little heaven on earth to a bunch of cute healthy drama kids who did a great job last friday at International Night.