Broken Bodies

I appreciated Smith's language about his daughter when he said, "she finally rested her tired body" (or something to that effect, I don't have the book with me). It reminds of several people I know, one of whom is my wife, whose bodies just don't work right. In many respects they experience life as the ups and downs of pain. One day they may feel closer to normal, how they used to feel before, and other days its just a constant struggle to maintain.

There is a certain trend in theological circles to view salvation primarily as a this-worldly kind of thing. I'm really all for that, that's kind of what we're doing when we're reading a book about spiritual disciplines: learning how to be saved, through the work of the Holy Spirit, from our own this-worldly brokenness. But usually when I hear or read something from this persuasion it is at the expense of past other-worldly salvation ideals. Those old ideas about one day going to heaven sound too much like escapism, quietism, and a host of other problems that we could do without today.

But as I encounter people with broken bodies, whose bodies never give them a chance to feel normal; whose bodies stop them from feeling pretty, stop them from feeling capable, stop them from feeling like they can do anything else but survive...as I continue to see this in the elderly and young alike, I believe that the promise of heaven where are bodies are made new is not such a bad idea.

Heaven is a part of God's justice in an vulnerable world. We are made vulnerable: vulnerable to sin, vulnerable to diseases, vulnerable to powers that could care less about us. Many of us will not experience any recompense for this vulnerability and the evils that result from it. Part of God's justice has to be in a Heaven where our bodies are pulled out of the wreckage, held, loved, and made new.

I have this hope for Sierra, and I think its part of God's love and justice to share this hope with those whose bodies and lives are broken. Not in a condescending or thoughtless way, but as the hope that we will all experience the comfort in another world that our lives never afforded us in this one.