Tag Archives: Revelation

Review: Home

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Home, for me, is Utah. My happiest memories were made in this valley just west of the Wasatch Mountains — a stone’s throw from my favorite hikes, hangouts, and loved ones. This year I’ve had an opportunity to travel to some of the world’s most beautiful places, but nothing beats coming home. On the other hand, Utah is smoggy, always under construction, marred with temples built to false gods, and the winter can overstay its welcome. Utah is simultaneously not my home. Its best qualities are glimpses of my future home on the new earth and its worst qualities keep me hungering for more — something better.

In her new book, Home, Elyse Fitzpatrick calls this hunger “homesickness.” It’s feeling restless, nostalgic, and unsatisfied in our own home, knowing we’re made for some other place — namely heaven. Fitzpatrick, aware of the glaring limitations, does her best to describe this place — not by giving overly speculative details, but by exploring sweeping themes in Scripture.

One of the major themes is resurrection. Fitzpatrick challenges us to reimagine heaven as a REAL place — physical bodies on a physical earth. None of this bodiless, harps-on-a-cloud business. The Bible gives a better picture: the resurrection of Jesus guarantees our own resurrection, which means we’ll live with God and our fellow saints in time and space. Heaven isn’t just the place we go when we die, where our spirits await reunion with our bodies; ultimately, heaven will be right here on a redeemed earth, when everything is made new. (She actually spends a good chunk of time talking about the meaning of “new” and how amazing it’ll be to live in a place where nothing gets old.) The new earth will not be completely unrecognizable, in the same way that Jesus’ resurrected body shares similarities with his old body. This continuity gives us a lot to imagine in terms of what we’ll know, love, and remember once we get there — not to mention the countless new wonders we can’t even begin to imagine!

And then there’s this awesome chapter on the city of heaven. Fitzpatrick lingers here because of how many people imagine heaven being this sort of farmland — spacious and rural. John the Revelator makes it pretty clear that heaven is a city, not only in terms of architecture (think the enormous cubed metropolis described in Revelation 21) but also as the hotbed of culture and, most importantly, the gathering of PEOPLE. Of course, this will be unlike any city we’ve ever known, completely free from the sinful things that drive us away from cities today. But she wants us to really think about the “garden city” God himself describes in his Word. As someone who enjoys escaping into the mountains, Fitzpatrick did a good job of helping me look forward to life in the big city.

I really appreciate the chapter on suffering, which is a recurring theme throughout Home. Fitzpatrick admits she wrote this book following a time of intense personal and ministerial troubles. She needed a reminder of her future home. But because she feels like her sufferings pale in comparison to fellow believers in Christ, she includes testimonies from those whose faith persevered through various trials — including disease, divorce, and the death of loved ones — as they held onto the hope of heaven. The theme of suffering reminds the reader that life isn’t always rosy… but heaven will be.

Another treasure was chapter ten, which describes how the Church is a foretaste of heaven. If we’re doing it right, “the church should be a place where we get glimpses, whiffs, whispers of [heaven] from time to time.” Jesus speaks to us through his Word, the sermon, and becomes “accessible to our senses” through the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. I’m so thankful to be part of a church family that affirms that truth: each week foreshadows a greater communion to come, when we gather together with saints to worship God — only then it will be unhindered by sin.

For Fitzpatrick, writing this book was a reminder — the expectation of our future home. I think we all need that. We need books and pastors and friends to keep our eyes fixed on the horizon of heaven. We need to know SOMETHING of the place we’re headed — not only for ourselves, but also for the people looking for hope in all the wrong places. In either case, I think Home will help.

God, What Are You Doing?

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Last year I was going through a particularly hard time — one of those days when everything seems to come crashing down at once. And yes, it had something to do with being gay and Christian and celibate and fighting the good fight. Not every day is peachy, even when you have a website called The Happy Alternative. That day, on the verge of tears, I asked out loud, “God, what are you doing?”

I’m amazed what answers came to mind. It’s like God was WAITING for me to ask that question — to cast my cares on him. The answers started flowing so quickly, in fact, that I grabbed a pencil and scribbled them on notebook paper:

Behold, I am making all things new. (Revelation 21:5)

Working all things together for good. (Romans 8:28)

I am coming soon. (Revelation 22:7)

I’m not claiming to have had any sort of special revelation here. No, this was ACTUAL revelation: God’s Word. Real answers to a question tossed up to heaven in a moment of frustration. Words that have encouraged and strengthened saints across the ages — once painted on papyrus, now scrawled on a steno pad. Words breathed out long ago by God’s Spirit, and brought to mind by that same Spirit working in me… in the year 2015.

God rarely gives us tailor-made answers to the question “Why?” Sometimes we get glimpses in hindsight, but in the moment, when we’re aching for something more immediate and personalized, we forget that we have something better: the big picture. We don’t have to wait for God to speak out loud. (He already has.) We just need someone to remind us — we need to remind ourselves — that we’re part of a big, wonderful, supernatural, epic love story with a very happy ending.

That’s what I got that day on a scrap of paper — a reminder. I’ve looked at that paper so many times since, I’m hardly tempted to ask the question that inspired it. I know what God is doing. He’s told me. I know that whatever I’m going through, he’s in it — active and present and WORKING. The Apostle John said there isn’t room enough in the world for the books it would take to describe the things Jesus did while here on earth, much less what he’s doing now.

Imagine the scraps of paper we’ll fill when we see him face to face!

Home Is Where We’re Happy

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I’ve got a robust imagination when it comes to envisioning Heaven. Ask my friends: they’ve heard all my crazy theories about our future home — from how old we’ll look to what kind of dinosaurs we’ll ride. Looking forward to Heaven is one of my favorite pastimes, and a not-so-secret way to be happy in Christ.

Jesus told his disciples he was going to prepare a place for them. Maybe with his own hands! He was a carpenter, right? I’ve heard some people say he was a stonemason. Either way, he’s qualified. He made the universe, too, so I have no doubts about this house:

In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and I will take you to myself, that where I am there you may be also. (John 14:2-3)

How could we not wonder about this house? Did he design it room by room? Did he consider our tastes? That’s what a good designer does, after all, and Jesus is the best. Did he build the frame, hang the molding, lay the carpet? Does he keep the light on in the hallway?

I love to imagine!

Rooms with beds as real as the one I’m sitting on right now, as I type. Rooms where we feast, hold hands around the table. Rooms where we meet at the piano, sing, and try to write music that hasn’t already been written. Rooms where we gather by the fireplace and talk into the early morning hours, maybe about some of the stupid things we did. The foolish things we believed.

This is the stuff of happiness.

Where does your imagination take you? Will you live close to me? To Jonah? To Nicodemus? Are pets allowed? And if so, will my room be big enough for a stegosaurus? Maybe the walls will be made of paper, like in Japan. Or maybe they’re stucco, coated with bright colors, like in Mexico. Some might be lined with logs, like a cabin in the Rockies. I think there will be hints of every culture throughout the house to reflect the diversity in which God delights. Especially if it’s going to be a house for those “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9).

This house isn’t a symbol. It exists in time and space — made from matter. It’s where we’ll live with the saints and God himself, when Heaven and Earth become one — the thrill of the new, fused with the familiarity of the old. Even better than Eden. I can’t imagine, and yet I still try.

But no matter what it looks like, no matter how he designs and decorates it, and even if I don’t know for sure whether we’ll be able to teleport, or fly, or walk through walls, I know the most important thing: Jesus will be there. “That where I am there you may be also.” For that reason, the house will feel like home — and home is where we’re happy.