2 Corinthians 5:1, “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
We had a prayer meeting at our local church last night and, after prayer, I was talking with some of the older members and one of them made a comment something like: “why is it when we get older and weaker we seem to know and love the Lord more and more?” One thought that came to my mind was this text in 2 Corinthians.
These present bodies are like tents, and—like tents—they are not permanent. They wear out, they are eaten away by moths, their walls get thin and worn, their canvas tears….and yet, as the tent grows thin, more of the outside light is able to enter. A tent with holes means a tent through which the fresh mountain airs can blow, a tent into which the rising morning sun can shine, a tent—to put it simply—more open to the outside world.
It is, of course, not universally true…..but in some sense, I think the Lord has designed us such that, as our tents “waste away” (2 Cor.4:16), we are more clearly able to perceive the homeland—the Far Green Country—that lies just on the other side of the ever-thinning veil….and more than that, we are more clearly able to perceive the One who has prepared for us, in that country, an indestructible building to replace this mortal tent.
That too is crucial to see. The Christian hope is not a de-tented “nakedness,” a disembodied spiritual existence….no, our desire and our end is not to be unclothed, but further clothed (2 Cor.5:4). We are not headed for a dis embodied existence but for a super embodied existence….We are groaning in these tents to put on a resurrection body, a body in which every interaction with the YHWH-besotted new creation will be unadulterated worship of the One True God (Hab.2:14), in which we will be able to know and enjoy God in Christ to a degree and with a universally pervasive quality unimaginable in our present state. This is our hope, our blood-bought hope.
So—as these tents waste away, may we be renewed day by day as we anchor our final and deepest hopes not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are (presently) unseen….for the things that we can now see are transient, but the things that we cannot yet see are eternal.
