August 29
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HEAVENLY BODIES
A poem by ILMA
For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down
That is, when we die and leave this earthly body, we’ll have a house in heaven,
It is an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands
We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies.
We will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies
While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want, We want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up God himself has prepared us for this, and guaranteed us his Holy Spirit.
Though we know that while we’re in our bodies, we are not at home with God
We live by believing and not by seeing; we’d rather be separate from our bodies
That’s how we’ll be at home with the Lord; whether we’re here on not
Our goal is to please him, for we must all stand before Christ to be judged.
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MEMORY VERSE
So, we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. For we live by believing and not by seeing.
– 2 Corinthians 5:6-7
Read: 2 Corinthians 5:1-10
Christians can easily be derailed at looking at the big picture. Because we live in this world, it can be a challenge to continue to believe even if we don’t see. In these verses, we see how Paul addresses the importance of focusing on what has been promised to us by God, our heavenly bodies which will be united with him when He comes back for us on Judgment day. Do you get into the pitfall of clamoring to stay in your physical bodies and fail to look forward to what God promised us, a heavenly body to join him.
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REFLECTION
• How can we not lose track of the spiritual and avoid focusing on the physical?
• Why is the heavenly body we’re promised didn’t make sense to unbelievers?