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Title: Living in Hope

 

Bible Readings: Daniel 12.5-end ; Hebrews 11.1-2, 32-39

 

"Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

no hell below us

above us only sky

Imagine all the people, living for today....."

 

John Lennon's song implies that it would be a good thing if people could stop looking for heaven.  That heaven is a sort of distraction from getting on with addressing the real issues of today.  Daniel wouldn’t have agreed.  Daniel was imagining heaven all the time.  Daniel’s visions are full of angels, heavenly battles and strange creatures.  We find them quite difficult to read today.  That’s because Daniel pictured the heavens in terms of the culture of his day – he wrote of creatures who looked like the statues of ancient Babylon and warleaders like the princes of his time.  If he lived today, he might be using images from the movies, like superman or analogies from the business world with its multinational corporations.  When we talk of heavenly realities we can only use analogies to express the inexpressible.  But knowing that there are heavenly realities and dwelling on them is important.  It is simply not true that if we are "too heavenly minded" we will be "no earthly good". 

Why is this.

 

It saves us from bitterness when we suffer in this life.  Daniel went through a great deal.  The loss of his family, the destruction of his nation, religious persecution.  Through all this he held it together.     The Knowledge that God one day would right the wrongs he had suffered gave him the courage to do this.  A young man, who shattered his back falling down the stairs at the age of one stunned his vicar and the congregation when interviewed him in church.  The teenager remarked that "God is fair".  He was 17 years old and the cumulative time spent in hospital as he traveled back and forth for treatment was 13 years of his life.  "Do you think that is fair?" the vicar asked him.  The young man didn’t hesitate, "God has got all of eternity to make it up to me".   God has indeed got all of eternity to make it up to us - and the young man had had plenty of time to seriously think through the promise of heaven, it put temporary sufferings in a different light.

 

The knowledge of heavenly realities can inspire us to play our small part in the bringing in of God’s Kingdom.  Knowing how one day, beyond his lifetime – there would be justice and peace under God’s rule.  He never saw God act to bring his people back from exile except in vision.  But he hung on to God’s promise of a better future.  This gave Daniel hope to live for today when life was tough.  He worked for the welfare of the country where he found himself, was faithful in prayer and an example to God’s people Daniel’s visions of heavenly realities were not just of the future though they were also of the present – He tried to see what the political realities of his day looked like from God’s perspective.  What did it mean in spiritual terms when one nation invaded another or a captive people’s traditional values were slowly eroded by a stronger nation. 

In our complex world, we find it difficult to do this.  The rightness of political decisions is difficult to judge – but we cannot deny that they have a spiritual and moral effect.  Why is it that there is more crime among young people, why is there more teenage pregnancy, why are there more broken families… These things are connected with the loss of Christian values in our society.  Many of those who have had most impact on this world's history for good are those who took most thought for the next - take for example, William Wilberforce and those who campaigned with him for the abolition of slavery in this country. Or take Mother Teresa.

 

It is simply not true that if we are "too heavenly minded" we will be "no earthly good".  The people of whom that is said are generally aiming at a very distorted picture of heaven.  Our wish to do good in the present is a bit like health - it's a great thing but people who over concentrate on it, end up imaging that they have all sorts of illnesses.  We are only likely to remain healthy when we want other things -  food, work and the sort of fun that enables us to enjoy exercise.  In the same way, we will not achieve the best for our families, our community, our nation so long as that is our main object.  We must learn to want something more.  We must learn to live in hope – for God’s perfect Kingdom. 

A better saying is that of C.S. Lewis:

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in: Aim at earth and you will get neither"