A Perfect World

Well, I’m still here, and quite surprised considering how I felt during some days last year.  I’m still feeling about the same, frequently experiencing bouts of mild nausea.  The primary tumor (now about the size of a potato) surrounding my pancreas, is growing because I’m beginning to feel it, especially when I lay on my side or sneeze.  I know it’s a matter of time before it begins damaging vital parts.  I also know my cancer continues to grow in other places as well.

But I don’t think about any of that.  I wake up each morning with a few things in mind to do.  I do my regular chores, hoping I’ll have the strength to do them to the end.  I enjoy my time with the Lord and rejoice that, before too long, I’ll be with Him in Heaven.  That makes me super excited and ready for whatever the day brings.

This month I had the privilege of reading through, studying, underlining, cross-referencing, and pondering John Piper’s new 700-page book – Providence.  Highly recommended, the book leaves me overwhelmed by the scope and the depth of the counterintuitive wonders of God's sovereignty and the profound yet tender purposes for which God acts in our lives day by day.  I wish I had this understanding of God's sovereignty and purposes many years ago.

About mid-way through the book, he summarizes with a series of thought-provoking questions:

* Do I walk in a haze of worldliness that is oblivious to the vastness of the reality of God?

* Am I anesthetized by trivial excitements that keep me from seeing and feeling what is most terrible and glorious in this world?

* Have I lost soul capacities to live my life in the trembling and joyful awareness of God’s all-embracing providence?

* Can I see death and suffering with razor-sharp edges of lucidity, feel them with suitable empathy (Heb. 13:3), and draw near with tears of compassion, laden with riches of quiet hope, precisely because of God’s providence and not in spite of it?

* Do I taste and see the wisdom and power and goodness of God in His all-embracing providence in such a way that I bring unshakable hope, irreversible healing, and the steadying ballast of truth for the stormy voyage to Heaven?

* Will I come to know this God, whose way is perfect, with such depth and intimacy that the pervasiveness of His providence over suffering and sin will be for me – and through me – a rock, a shield, a staff, a balm, a bed, a treasure, and a joy?

* Will I look most resolutely at the cross of Christ, where the worst human sins and the greatest divine love came together with perfect justice and mercy by the plan and hand of providence (Acts 4:27-28)?

* Will I realize that without this all-embracing providence, there is no gospel?

* And so will I rejoice and be glad that the providence of God governs everything?

 

Toward the end of the book, when speaking about our perfect home in Heaven, Piper writes:  

Sin will be completely eliminated.  Nothing unclean or immoral or spiritually half-hearted will be there.  All thoughts will be true.  All desires will be free of any self-exaltation.  All feelings will be calm or intense in perfect proportion to the nature of the reality felt.  All deeds will be done in the name of Jesus and for the glory of God.  Every particle and movement and connection in the material world will communicate something of the wisdom and power and love of God.  And the capacity of the glorified minds and hearts and bodies of the saints will know and feel and act with no frustration, no confusion, no repression, no misgiving, no doubt, no regret, and no guilt.  All our knowing-whatever we know-will include the knowledge of God.  All our feeling-whatever we feel-will include the taste of the worth and beauty of God.  All our acting-whatever we do-will comply in sweet satisfaction with the will of God.

 

Wow!  I can’t wait!  Well, I guess I’ll have to wait a little longer.  In the meantime, I’ll continue enjoying my family, worship with fellow believers, communicate with friends, read more books, and do my daily chores.  But never far from my thoughts are the Bible-revealed realities of what heaven will be like.  A perfect world with perfect people, all praising a perfect God, surrounded my unimaginable beauty, continuing to learn, experience, interact, ponder, reflect, endeavor, work, enjoy, and be alive like never before!