Well, winter is over! I’m not superstitious at all, but I may have knocked on my wooden desk as I wrote that… I mean, after all… we DO live in Northern Ohio… so you never know. The passing of winter brings the freshness of spring. It also brings with it the necessity of spring cleaning on the McKnight Family Homestead. No matter how hard I work to have the property cleaned up at the exit of fall — winter does its damage. Leaves blow into the yard from the surrounding woods, debris clutters the flower gardens and the nooks and crannies around the buildings, and dead branches fall from the trees.
Oh, those branches… We have about a million trees on our property… ok, not a million, but close… like maybe 50, and those trees shed so many branches that I half expect our trees to be naked for the summer! Our yard, driveways and landscape gardens are covered with dead, broken branches every spring.
So… this past week, after I spent some time psyching myself up, I started to clean up those broken sticks — a chore that I loathe. Bend over… pick up some sticks… straighten up and throw them in my Ranger dump bed… and repeat… about a thousand times. After a few hours I finally had the yard cleaned up, and had disposed of the branches. The satisfaction of a miserable job accomplished — but I knew what was coming my way the next day — by morning I was soooo sore I could hardly move! My lower back muscles screamed at me for the next two days, “What have you done to us, you fool?!” Who needs a $2000 Peloton bike when you can just stop by my house for the workout of a lifetime picking up branches. I’ll cheer you on like those personal workout trainers… “You can do it!”
Do you know what all of those dead branches and sore muscles brought to my mind this week? Heaven. I admit that I have Heaven on the brain because I have spent so much time over the past few weeks studying for our current message series… but yeah… dead branches and sore muscles… Heaven.
You see, Heaven will mean the end of death… and the end of sore muscles. I really hope I don’t have to pick up branches out of my yard in Heaven someday… but if I do… the new glorified body that God will gift me will be just fine!
Paul wrote… But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed! It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies. 1 Corinthians 15:51,53 NLT
Isaiah wrote… But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:31 NLT
A new body that will be strong, healthy and vigorous… one that will never experience death. Now that sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? As a matter of fact, our new bodies in Heaven will be our subject matter for our April 28th Sunday message… and it is some pretty good stuff. God’s blessings for his people are beyond our wildest imaginations. But for now… where IS that Icy Hot?
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