The Celestial City

Genesis 47:9 ESV

And Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning.”

The poignancy of the last chapters of Genesis always draws me in. The reality of family conflict needing forgiveness, guilt continuing to cast its shadow on brothers even after they are forgiven, a heal grabber looking back on his life and realizing “few and evil” are his years. As Jacob prepares for his death, he gets to see the children of the son he thought was lost forever. The moment we stand with Christian and Hopeful at the river trying to find away around the reality of “this mortal coil”, is a fate awaiting us all. As we contemplate our lives and life after we have crossed over regret and sorrow may take the field for a time as it does with Christian who needs his companion to bolster him when doubt and sorrow flow over him in those troubled waters, as the last impediment to Pilgrim’s Progress towards the celestial city. Many have walked with him on the journey some Faithful and some Worldly Wiseman. He has fought with Giants and Demons, Former Master and angry mobs. Yet, his battle was always greatest against his own sin. And so, it plagues him mightily at the end.

I recently hear a quote from Timothy Keller, “If it wasn’t for my sin, I would be completely resting in Christ… and the Resurrection would be spiritually real to me and I would be fine.” Mr. Keller has Pancreatic Cancer and wanted to make sure people understood he wasn’t fighting Cancer he was fighting sin. His body was fighting off and the doctors were doing their best, but his greatest or the real battle was against his own sin, not the cancer ravaging his body. I have read and reread that quote multiple times in the last few days. Seeing how easy it is to get lost in the trifles of this life. Our failures and our vanities, and forget the reality of the moment.

How many of us fall victim to the sin of thinking that eternity is closer because a doctor has told us we have cancer or because a government tells us a virus is deadly? As we plan our bigger barns does not scripture cry out a warning “You fool! This night your life will be required of you.” (Luke 12:20). Sin clouds our thinking and distracts us from the reality of our moment. Many things are coveting your attention. As millions are paid for those things that can hold your eyeballs long enough to get you to buy something. Yet, if we are doing our job, addressing the sin of our hearts, and growing in the faith “the things of earth will grow strangely dim” as the hymnist tells us. Why then do we fall victim to fear when we are told that the virus has mutated and the vaccine is not preventing the spread of some of these new versions?

Our sin and hubris are on full display. We like every generation that has come before are not in control of life or death. Let us attack both with the conviction and veracity that come from those who have escaped their former master and seek our heavenly home in the Celestial City.

Cruce, Dum Spiro, Fido